He looked across at Jury in fright. Suddenly, he must have remembered that his sister’s education would never be thrown up to him again.
• • •
He hadn’t seen her since the convent days, Tommy told him, as they stood at the gate of St. Anne’s. “It was really a lark, seeing Sadie with her head all wrapped up in that black scarf. They shaved it off. Her hair, I mean. They’re bald, nuns are. Terrible, I think.” The look he shot Jury was just a tiny bit defiant, as if he were willing to argue the point.
“I don’t think they are, though. Bald, I mean. And if your sister was a novitiate, well, they’d have let her hair alone. Cut it just a bit perhaps.” Roy Marsh had given him what information the Thames police had collected. That the girl had entered a convent struck Jury as out of character. The picture he had of her was of a rather brassy, even pushy, and not unselfish person.
“Seems wrong to me, anyway. There’s a lot about the church seems wrong.” He glanced at Jury to see how he was taking these increasingly heretical judgments. When Jury didn’t rise to the bait, he seemed relieved and immediately lost interest in the right and the wrong of it.
The unsmiling waiter set down a high-piled metal dish of sweet-and-sour pork in its glaze of bright orange sauce as Tommy told Jury stories about his childhood — long past, he seemed to think — when Sadie had been his best, sometimes his only, companion. There were Wendy-houses, picnics in secret, dark caves, playing truant from school . . . indeed all of the things that one reads of in the idyllic descriptions of books or sees on the telly — the sort of childhood no one ever really had, or if one had, would not remember clearly through a haze of eternal summer.
Jury thought he understood why Tommy had been so quick to say that the victim wasn’t his sister: he had never really had the relationship with her he was now inventing. The difference in age would have been only one factor, really. It would have been possible, he supposed, for a certain kind of seventeen-year-old girl to indulge a small brother in the way Tommy imagined, but he doubted Sadie Diver was that sort of sister. That she had gone for months, years, without trying to communicate (except to send him the snapshot) and then had only done so (and probably regretted it) in her new economic circumstances as a way, probably, to get the message to the Mulhollands that she was better off than they would ever be.
“So Sadie wasn’t exactly nunlike, right, Tommy? Not the quiet and contemplative life for her, hmm?”
He was already halfway through his mountain of rice, spooning the pork and pineapple on it for good measure. “Her? Don’t make me laugh. Sadie quiet and . . . whatever . . .”
“What gave her that religious turn, all of a sudden?”
“Aunt Glad and Uncle John gave it. They thought she was, you know . . . kind of wild. It was just for a year.”
“You have to be fairly smart to enter one. There are exams you have to pass. It’s not for tearaways.”
Tommy smiled over his teacup. “Sadie could be anything. It’s my thinking she did it just to get them out of her hair. Or what was left of her hair,” he added darkly.
That patina of breeding, of reserve, of nunlike calm was something Sadie Diver could have acquired. It sounded as if she were sharp and resilient. From the report Roy Marsh had given him, the Mulhollands were pretty resilient themselves. Hard as hard cheese, had been his impression. He’d said the lad hadn’t seemed too happy after he’d talked to them, either.
Tommy was going on with a tale of Sadie playing nurse to the four dogs and three cats, as a bit of a plan evolved in Jury’s mind. Since Tommy too would have to “keep himself available,” as he’d told Ruby Firth . . . why not? The boy had come up to London with such candlelit hopes, all of them sputtered out now because this girl round whom he had spun a lot of dreams had been murdered. Why, on top of this, should he have to go back so soon to a house where tea and sympathy would be absent? At least, at the Ruby Dragon, you could get the tea. He looked at the harmonica sticking up from the pocket of the jacket that hung across the lad’s thin shoulders like an old life he couldn’t slough off.
Jury checked his watch and took out some bills. “Come on, if you’re through, and I’ll take you along to the pub. I’ve got to meet my sergeant there.”
“Me, sir? But they won’t let me in, I don’t think. Under age.”
“We’ll manage it.”
The way the pale face lit up reminded Jury of the rice-paper screens. Light came and went behind them, transforming imprints almost magically. He nodded.
Jury added: “Since you’ve got to keep yourself available for police, I was thinking it might be better for you to stay in London at least tonight. Also, I may need you to go to Northamptonshire.”
Northants or China, it made no odds to Tommy Diver. Just as long as it wasn’t Gravesend. “Yes, sir. Stay at Ruby’s, you mean?”
“No, I was thinking of somewhere else you might like better. Friend of mine has a flat.”
“Is it a policeman, then?”
“I’m sure she thinks she is.”
Twenty-four
MOLLOY WAS polishing a glass and looking dubiously at Tommy Diver.
“He’s older than he looks, Molloy,” said Jury, who was looking round the scene for Wiggins.
Tommy folded a stick of gum into his mouth and ordered a lemon squash, giving Molloy back his stare.
Jack Krael was in his usual place at the bar, staring at his fixed point in space; Wiggins was in the alcove lined with tea packets. He walked over to the bar, looked from Tommy to Jury, as if someone must have forgotten the licensing laws.
“I don’t think Marsh was too happy about you wanting the autopsy shoved forward. They were dragging their feet even about the photos. Sergeant Marsh said he’d bring them himself. I don’t think he likes me; could hardly get a cuppa out of him. That wind that blows off the river. I swear I can’t imagine why anyone’d volunteer for Thames Division. Have to be an expert swimmer.” Wiggins shivered. His hand went up to his neck and he announced he was getting a bad throat from that stop on Wapping Old Stairs. He took the cup Molloy sat before him and got out his packet of black biscuits.
Tommy watched him break one up into the water and said, “You could do the same with burnt toast.” He made sucking noises with his straw.
The cup halted in midair as Wiggins looked down at Tommy. “What?”
“Wouldn’t cost you eighty p, either, like that lot.” Tommy poked at the cellophane-wrapped packet. “Just toss the bread in the fire and let it char. Same thing. What do you do for your sore throat, anyhow?”
As Wiggins put down some money for another lemon squash, he said, “Camphorated oil. A nice hot compress.”
Tommy shrugged. “Try an old sock. Just make sure it’s full of sweat — real dirty. The sock’ll do it every time. Thanks.” He took his bottle of squash.
Wiggins, finding in the boy an unexpected resource, drew him aside, apparently amazed that a germ-ridden sock might hold curative powers.
Jury took the opportunity to disrupt Jack Krael’s meditations. “Have a look at this, will you?” Jury showed him the photo of Simon and Hannah Lean.
“Same chappie as was in that other picture.” He shrugged.
“What about the woman?”
Jack Krael looked harder this time, took it in his own twisted fingers and frowned. “Looks like Sadie Diver. Except when I saw her she was always got up like a dog’s dinner. What’s she doin’ with him?”
“Like this, you mean.” Jury put the snap of Sadie side-by-side with the other. “More like this, you mean.” Full color, flash and dazzle. Enough rouge and blue eyeshadow to streak an evening sky. Hair like dark, high-piled clouds.
Jack Krael reflected. “That’s her; that’s Sadie. Funny what a change of hairstyle can do, and all that muck they stick on their faces. This one here looks thinner.” He flicked his thumbnail at the shot of Hannah. Then he looked at Tommy. “That’s her brother, is it? I wondered he looked familiar. Hard on the kid, inhn’
t?”
“Pretty hard, yes. He’ll be going home soon.”
Jack Krael caught Tommy’s eye. “You ain’t from round here, then, lad?”
“No. Gravesend.”
Krael’s face broke into a rare smile. “Gravesend, is it? Used to run a tug there. Know anything about boats?”
Tommy managed a swagger, hard when you’re drinking lemon squash through a straw. “You could say so.”
“Well, set yourself up here —” and Krael hit the stool beside him.
Jury handed Wiggins the photo of the Leans and the snap of Sadie Diver, and told him to show them around to the regulars.
Wiggins glanced at it, frowning. “But she’s in Northants, I thought you said.”
“Somebody’s in Northants. But it’s not necessarily Hannah Lean.”
• • •
People were drifting in, getting their drinks at the bar, settling themselves in for a recap of the twenty-four or so hours since they’d seen one another. At least, that was the way Jury sometimes thought of it, as he watched an emaciated customer slug coins into the jukebox and squint at the menu of songs. At the Angel sometimes Jury looked over the same faces he had seen so many times before and got the queer feeling that between bouts at the pub, time simply stopped. They’d disappear, come back, disappear again.
Roy Marsh came in carrying a manila envelope under his arm and looking like the whole lot of them could disappear and the world be none the worse for it.
“What’s going on, Jury? What’s the kid doing here?” He nodded toward the back of the room. His soft voice had such a cutting edge it could even penetrate the blare of “Mack the Knife,” coming from the jukebox.
“He’s all right,” said Jury, mildly.
“I didn’t ask if he was all right. I went round to Ruby’s and no one was home. He’s my responsibility, Jury. His people are waiting to take him back to Gravesend.”
Molloy came down the bar with Jury’s pint, looked inquiringly at Roy Marsh, got a blistered glance in return, and scurried away.
“Let them wait. This for me?” Jury opened the envelope, took out the police photographer’s pictures.
Roy moved an inch, leaned into Jury. The low voice had as much weight as the cement bag going down in Bobby’s song. “Your sergeant said you wanted to be present at the autopsy. Not only that, you wanted it done tonight. You wanted antemortem dental records, you wanted this, you wanted that. This isn’t your case, Jury; this is Thames Division’s. A clear-cut case of homicide, and I think we’re equipped to handle it.”
Jury was studying one of the shots of the body. “I would have thought it was up for grabs, Roy; you and Ballinger couldn’t seem to decide whether to throw it to the river police, ‘H’ Division, or the Port of London Authority. And it’s far from being clear-cut.” Jury nodded toward the jukebox. “Take that cement bag going down.”
Marsh frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Jury returned the pictures to the envelope and pinched the clasp tight. “Look, Roy. Killers don’t ordinarily leave bodies on slipways where they’re certain to be found — that one’s right by a pub, remember? — when they could just toss them in the river, let the tide take them away —”
“Bodies rise.”
“Weight it down. Or even if the murderer’s in too much of a damned hurry to get out, he’s gained nothing by leaving the body on the slipway.” Jury looked at Marsh. “So I’d say the killer wanted it found. Letting it wash into the river, he couldn’t have been certain, or what condition it’d be in.”
“Why?”
“To make sure it was known that the woman was dead. Especially if the woman was rich. The disposition of a fortune in the future, for example.”
“That example tells me sod-all, Jury.”
“Sorry. I’d explain it, but I’m not sure if what I think happened, did.” But he didn’t add that he wouldn’t explain it because he wasn’t sure about Marsh himself.
“You’re making something out of — get the hell out of here, Kath.”
Kath had muscled her way between them. “It’s yer kind that’s goin’ to get axed when I’m on council.”
“One of these days, Kath, I’m running you in for disturbing the peace.”
“Ha! Listen to ’im, listen to ’im. You run me in. Shut yer gob, with what I know about you — Mol-LOY.” She took the drink he sloshed toward her, winked at Jury, and said, “Ast ’im what ’e’s doin’ over to Limehouse Causeway sittin’ in ’is car. ’Ere, sonny, don’t fergit t’ vote.” She shoved several pamphlets at Roy, who let them fall to the floor.
Jury studied him, scanned the room for a table. “Let’s sit down for a minute.”
“I’ve got work to do.”
“A minute.”
They walked back to a table in the corner near the jukebox. The place wasn’t half-full, so there was relative quiet.
“It was never much of a secret about you and Ruby, was it?” When Roy refused to say anything, managed to sit as if he were still standing, Jury said, “I wouldn’t suppose you’d take very kindly to him, would you?” Jury showed him the photo of Hannah and Simon Lean.
It was hard to believe that such a low voice could have such a cutting edge to it. “Leave her out of this.” It came out between a hiss and a whisper.
“I wish I could.”
“I’d never have guessed. If you want to yank me in for questioning, I’m always available to police.” He pulled the snapshot around with his finger, looking at it again. “How did he know Sadie Diver, then?”
“That’s the point, Roy. The woman isn’t Sadie Diver. It’s his wife, Hannah.” Jury returned the picture to his pocket, took a drink from his pint, and watched the expression on Roy’s face turn from anger to disbelief to that stony look Roy used to mask all expression.
Roy got up, made no further comment, except to say, “The autopsy’s set up for ten tonight.”
• • •
Jury sat there for a moment in the relative silence of the corner, the music of the jukebox only a blur. The warmth of Linda Ronstadt’s voice had replaced one of those interchangeable, metallic groups.
He looked through the haze of smoke toward the alcove where Tommy was now standing at the table with the cardplayers, and wondered if the boy really believed that his sister was dead. Half of his mind might have accepted it, half not. Listening to Tommy in the Ruby Dragon, Jury had felt a certainty that Tommy wouldn’t have recognized his sister, not so much because he hadn’t seen her in these past years, but because he hadn’t really known her. He wondered if that was what his sister and Simon Lean were counting on, in the event that questions were ever asked . . . .
That was what bothered Jury. That Simon Lean might have been extraordinarily thorough, that he had taken into consideration that someone might suspect the switch. Lean must have allowed for the possibility that the murder of Sadie Diver could mean he’d be questioned by police . . . .
But, of course, the woman at Watermeadows would have provided him with an alibi. Hannah Lean. He was lighting a cigarette and in a sudden wash of anger let the match burn down to his fingertips. He tossed it in the tin ashtray, switched his attention to the music, mercifully soulful now with the singer’s doleful recollection of the fishing boats at the bayou.
Through the screen of smoke, he looked for Tommy. It was seven o’clock and they’d have to get going. Still he sat there with his hell of a headache, wondering if Wiggins had aspirin.
“ . . . savin’ nickels, sa-a-vin’ dimes . . .”
Jury pressed the heels of his palms against his head, thinking that Sadie Diver no longer had to worry about saving.
He looked up to see Alf stalking toward the door, Wiggins on his heels, grabbing his coat-sleeve, saying politely. “If you’d just hang about, sir, thank you.”
Frenzied eyes looked from Wiggins to Jury to the door through which Roy Marsh had passed. “He tol’ ya, dihn’t ’e? ’Twas that cop, weren’t it? Been on abou
t the rumors. I been watchin’ you both, talkin’ about it. I’d nothin’ t’ do with it, it’s all behind me. All the way from Australia I come an’ the rumors follows —”
Tommy Diver had come up behind him. “You from Australia? Listen, I’ll bet you like this, then.” Whereupon he whipped his harmonica from the pocket, ran up and down the scales, and overrode the mournful voice of Linda Ronstadt with his even-more-mournful “Waltzing Matilda.”
Twenty-five
JURY WOULD have known they were near the Floral Hall when Wiggins started sneezing, even if he hadn’t already known the area. Wiggins had interrupted his talk about Jack Krael to envelop his nose in a handkerchief. Fortunately, Jury himself was negotiating the turn or one of the Covent Garden porters would have been separated from his handtruck.
Wiggins continued his sad litany of loss. “I know how he feels, sir; it’s all going; might as well say good-bye to the lot. Just imagine what this place was like back when dockland was a hive of activity.”
He spoke of that time as if it had been centuries ago, not decades. “I remember,” said Jury.
“You’re not that old, sir. Now it’s just all those trendy little shops.” Wiggins replaced his small aspirator — he’d sworn he was working his way into asthma — and continued repining the loss of the past. “Apricots from South Africa, figs from Italy . . .” He sighed. “The pea-shuckers, incredible, they were.”
Jury smiled at Wiggins’s extolling a past that one day of living in would have had him flat on his back. No matter how colorful, there was filth and squalor, and no mass-produced charcoal biscuits. “You’re allergic to figs, Wiggins,” he said as he pulled the car up to a double yellow line.
The Five Bells and Bladebone Page 18
