‘The Actual? Is it good? Apart from this not altogether credible notion of yours?’
‘Oh, it’s wonderful, though I don’t know whether that’d make the notion any more likely in your eyes. But not only was it written by a man in his eighties —’ he flipped the slim volume over, colour picture of the author sitting in a white plastic chair in a meadow somewhere, and looking, yes, quite aged, though smiling — ‘but he has his hero attend, if not a funeral, a re-interment, and sexual attraction does take place.’
‘Well, if Saul Bellow says so ...’
‘And he’s now something of an authority on what Eros can do even to people in their eighties. His newish wife recently presented him with a child, you know.’
‘One up to your big theory. But one up to bed, as far as I’m concerned. I’m just about exhausted.’
Chapter Eight
On the third day of Wimbledon, with the tennis writers busy speculating, in a sort of ghostly tournament, over how Bubbles’ matches would have gone, Anselm came back.
Right, Harriet thought, as, looking out of her office window, she saw down below what must be the car arriving from Birchester Airport. Even if there’s no hard news from Marseilles we at least have one other likely-looking line to go on now. The Angus line. Nothing found so far, but something may yet be.
But, she thought with a wild bound of hope, Anselm may come thundering up the stairs at any moment. Will he say Pierre le Fou was seen, some time before the murder, perhaps by some fellow criminal, now persuaded to talk, boarding a private plane at some tucked-away airfield? And heading off northwards. For England.
She turned away and sat herself at her desk. There was, as always, a pile of messages to be checked over. She glanced back to the one she had been reading when the sound of what might have been Anselm’s car had taken her to the window, the report from the Greater Birchester Police fraud squad. Inquiries to date have indicated no malfeasance — Jesus, how they love the long words, the Frauds people — in the accounts of the Barbara Xingara Trust. Okay, another possible line run into the sand. But, never mind, a better lead perhaps appearing in a few seconds when DI Brent comes in to tell me what he found out in France.
And then will he be just DI Brent, a nice enough, intelligent enough officer whom I’m lucky to have on my team? In the light of day will that aching want I was gripped by prove to have been lifted, like the mists that hang over the Leven at dawn?
In front of her, almost concealed by the base of the desk-lamp, she saw now a pencil, with a badly chewed end.
She picked it up between two fastidious fingers, dropped it into the metal bin beside her.
Then, as at last she heard steps on the stairs, without pausing to think she leant over the bin, pulled out a big piece of crumpled paper, quickly opened it wide, carefully put it back so that it covered the evidence.
Bounding steps on the stairs? No. No, not bounding. But are they leaden?
Hard to make out.
But, bounding or leaden, they were approaching, the heavy tread of solid brown brogues. A tap at the door.
‘Come.’
Detective Inspector Anselm Brent stood there in the doorway, face surely a good deal more sun-reddened than before, thatch of fair hair as hastily combed as ever, orangey tweed jacket perhaps more dust-darkened, grey trousers with even less crease in them.
He said nothing.
‘Right,’ she managed to bring out.
Her power of speech seemed to have vanished.
Something had happened to her. She hardly knew what. She felt running through and through her, as if just underneath her skin a thin flame was licking at her very blood. In an instant she was bathed in sweat, and cold. Cold to trembling.
Christ, she thought, it’s love. It’s more, much more than that spout of mere lust at Adam and Eve House, there with the cuckoo calling and calling. My God, what am I going to do?
No. No, it’s past going to do. It’s done. It’s happened. It’s — It’s obsession. I’m lost.
The River Leven mists have not been lifted, far from it. However absurd it is, however unaccountable, the coils of Aphrodite are round me, entangling, not to be broken. Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens of the Greater Birchester Police, called the Hard Detective, is drowned in love for Detective Inspector Anselm Brent, Leven Vale Police.
She did not know what she might have done next, jump up from her desk, rush over to where Anselm still stood in the doorway, seize him round the neck, thrust a violent kiss on to his lips. But, at just that moment, up the stairs where Anselm had just clumped came a set of hurrying feet and DI Anderson pushed through the open door into the room.
‘Ma’am, we’ve got something. Look at these.’
He banged down on to the desk a small pile of papers. Harriet, bemused, still recognized the topmost one. The original text of the dreadful poem Fiona Diplock had read out in her clear, almost aggressive voice at the funeral.
She was a vision of delight
Our tennis girl in dazzling white.
She hit the ball as hard as hard,
She hit our hearts, got through our guard.
Never, never shall we forget
That grin, that laugh that won each set.
‘See the writing, ma’am,’ Handy Andy said, voice exultant. ‘Now look at the other one. That old Leven Vale plodder, Sgt Wintercombe, got it out of the files. Eventually. Sent to Bubbles care of the Lawn Tennis Association, just after the Eastbourne tournament.’
Harriet turned to the sheets below. A letter, on headed notepaper, running to three heavily scrawled sides. She began to read. An outpouring. Half-sensible phrase tumbling out after half-sensible phrase. You, only you, are my delight — turn my day to wondrous night, or night to day — I love you, my little Bubbles, I love you and love you and love you.
Christ, she thought, I could have said just those words two minutes ago to Anselm, standing there now looking as if he hardly knows what’s going on. I love you and love you and love you. I could have blurted them out, meant them. Except that bloody Handy Andy came crashing in.
And then she acknowledged that, yes, the words she was looking at were in precisely the same handwriting as that of the poem, for all that they were written with the lines rising madly upwards, veering wildly down, while the poem had been set out with schoolboy neatness.
But the same writing. No doubt about it, the poem signed Angus and this splatter of emotion had been written by the same man.
She flipped over the sheets looking for a signature.
Angus, and no more. But at the top there had been that address.
Have we got him? Is this him, our killer? Angus. It could be. The signs are there. The signs, but not the proof. All right, this fellow, whoever he is, is plainly crazy still about Bubbles. But no more than that. The forensic psychologists’ books outline a possible pattern, and our man here, Angus, fits it. But quite probably there are a dozen, a hundred, out there who fit it just as well.
‘Have you gone through all this, DI?’ she asked. Any other clues about the writer?’
‘Skimmed it, ma’am. But there’s nothing there, just gush about what he calls my Bubbles. Plain he’d never got near enough to do anything about her. Wanker.’
‘I dare say he is. But it’s clear he’s the sort of obsessive we ought to be looking out for, especially after sending that poem. Definitely something to look into. And urgently.’
She looked up at the deep-tanned face standing over her, white teeth bared in a grin of triumph.
‘But don’t think this resolves the case,’ she said. ‘Hopeful indications, all right. But no hard evidence.’
‘Well, ma’am ...’
‘No. There still might be a hundred, a thousand, other answers just as good. Ans — DI Brent here may have a clincher this moment. Do you, DI?’
If he has ... If he’s coped with the Marseilles police, the Marseilles crooks and got hold of some solid facts ...
She had not dared
to look up from her desk and put the question directly to him. She thought that if she let herself look at him again the same extraordinary thing that had happened to her when he had stepped into the doorway would happen again. The thin flame running and running under her skin, the sweat breaking out all over, on her face, on the backs of her hands, the icy cold and the trembling. And Handy Andy, well-practised seducer, would very likely know what was happening. And mock in secret, and perhaps not in secret.
‘The clincher, ma’am?’ Anselm said, the faint burr in his voice seeming more noticeable than ever. ‘No, I must admit I haven’t got that. Not anything like it really. They’re buggers, those French police, won’t give you a damn thing unless you press and press. And, tell the truth, I hadn’t got the facts to press with, nor much of the language, come to that. I did get them to row back a bit and admit that tale about Bubbles putting down Pierre le Fou in front of a whole crowd of his mates was a bit of a concoction. And someone did say, at least I think that was what they said, Pierre is back in circulation now. But they wouldn’t do anything to help me get to see him. And the criminals were worse, plain and simply anti-police, wherever you came from. Frankly I could hardly understand a word they said either, had to beg for a translation time and again and then learnt nothing. I felt a proper fool.’
‘Bad luck, DI,’ Handy Andy put in quickly.
Harriet could have struck him to the ground.
But she knew better than to leap to Anselm’s defence. She had succeeded, by keeping her eyes fixed hard on the jumbled pages of the Angus letter in front of her, in not giving herself away in a second fit of cold sweat and inner darting fire. But she knew that, if she once started making excuses for Anselm’s failure, she could all too easily find herself praising him to the skies, saying how well he had questioned Old Rowley, what a good job he had done in setting up the Incident Room, how quick he had been that first morning out at Adam and Eve House to get a search going for any intruder, for whatever weapon had been used.
Instead, still looking down at the desk in front of her, she muttered, uncharacteristically, something about not winning ’em all.
‘Listen, ma’am,’ Handy Andy pushed in again, ‘hadn’t one of us — well, I could handle it — better go to that address on the letter straight away? No. 32, Woodlands Crescent, Boreham, Birchester BC4 3AP. I mean, that’s fairly and squarely in the Greater Birchester Police area. I could be there in half an hour.’
She nearly agreed. But Handy Andy’s pushiness had set up an immediate sharply negative reaction in her. For a moment she actually contemplated giving the task to Anselm.
Hell, no. Offering a sop to an officer who had clearly not succeeded in the major task he’d been given? An utter give-away. And, in fact, a humiliation for Anselm as well.
‘No, DI,’ she said, giving Handy Andy a direct look. ‘No, I think this is something I’ll handle myself.’
Something positive to do may clear my mind, she thought. A tough interview with a real suspect. Back to being, all right, the Hard Detective. Antidote to becoming the Chocky-soft Detective. If it’ll work. But, no, it won’t. It’s too late now. I’m adrift. Adrift — will it be? — for ever. But at least it might take my mind off him for an hour or two. Partly off him.
*
Harriet did not get to the house in Boreham’s Woodlands Crescent quite as quickly as Handy Andy had promised to. Skimmed it, he had said when she had asked him if he had gone through the Angus letter. So before leaving she gave the three scrawled sheets the close scrutiny they deserved, if without finding anything pointing more directly to the writer as Bubbles’ killer. Now, with the poem and letter in plastic wallets in her briefcase, she was giving No. 32 a careful look-over from under the shade of one of the big chestnut trees lining the quiet outer-suburbs road.
‘Detached, with mature garden, the estate agents would say,’ she commented to staid Sgt Wintercombe, whom she had taken with her.
Probably built in the thirties, she thought. Brickwork lacking anything of the eighteenth-century mellowness of Adam and Eve House, and showing signs of deterioration here and there. The white paint of the windows peeling. The garden notable not so much for being mature as for the dried-up, patchy state of its wide lawn. Garage to the side, white tip-up door very much in need of paint, pulled blankly down.
‘Right, Sergeant, let’s see if our Angus is at home.’
‘Very good, ma’am. Though I dare say, if this is his place, he won’t be in.’
‘We’ll see.’
She opened the low curly ironwork gates and marched along the short length of the gravelled but weedy drive. No sign of tyre marks. So no car behind that shabby white garage door?
A big round bell-fitting at the side of the time-grimed green front door, with a big fat button at its centre. Forefinger on it, and held there. From inside the faint sound of continuous ringing. And silence.
Harriet was on the point of going round to the back, leaving Sgt Wintercombe where he was, when the heavy green-painted door swung open.
A dapper-looking elderly man stood there, high-veined, skinny, red hand clasping the door’s edge. Dark blue, brass-buttoned blazer, crisp white shirt, striped tie, black shoes shining with polish.
‘Police,’ Harriet said without ceremony, flipping her warrant card open almost under the narrow tanned face with its jauntily thin white moustache.
A pair of bright blue eyes looked up at the two of them speculatively.
‘The boys in blue, eh? Or, not to put too fine a point on it, one female of the species in fetching black-and-white linen costume and one really in blue, sergeant’s stripes.’
‘We need to talk to you,’ Harriet said. ‘Inside.’
‘Oh, certainly, certainly. Come in. Englishman’s castle ever open to the forces of the law.’
He backed away from the door, and Harriet moved swiftly forward to occupy the space left, followed more ponderously by Sgt Wintercombe.
The spry little octogenarian led them into a large room, furnished as a study. Panelled walls, perhaps in oak, two long bookshelves filled with gloomy-looking leather-bound works of some sort, four brown-leather armchairs, well scuffed, Turkish carpet more than a little threadbare, writing-table bearing — Harriet had not seen anything like it since she was a child visiting an old uncle — a three-decanter tantalus. By contrast, tucked away in a far corner there was an aged-looking television set on a grey metal stand.
She began without ceremony, riding over the dapper little man’s What’s all this? What? What?
‘Give me your name, please.’
‘Name? Name? Jolly old moniker.’
‘Please.’
‘Youngman, as a matter of fact. Youngman by name, and, I always say, young man by nature. Even at ripe old age of eighty-one. Eighty-one, by George.’
‘Notes, Sergeant.’
‘Taking them, ma’am.’
‘Forenames, please.’
‘Ah, donated at birth by loving parents. The pater was an archdeacon, believed in dishing out the full complement. Stand by there with that pencil.’
‘Just tell us.’
‘Right, here goes. Patrick Angus Peregrine. How about that? P. A. P. Youngman, known at school as Pappy. Ruined my life.’
‘But what are you called nowadays? Is it Patrick?’
If he is, then is this the end of as hopeful a lead as we’ve had yet?
‘No, no. Not at all. Hate the name Patrick, people thinking I’m Irish, calling me Paddy. Even worse than Pappy, eh? Feller’s parents ought to think before they go loading the son and heir with a collection like mine.’
‘So what are you known as, sir?’
‘Oh, Angus. Aberdeen Angus, what? Bit of a bull. Or was once. And still just a little bullish, on occasion. Can rise to it, you know. Can rise to it.’
And, standing in the middle of his gloomy, somewhat worse-for-wear study, he abruptly broke into a song-and-dance performance.
Maybe it’s because I’m a gentl
eman
That I love ladies so,
Jilly and Milly, and dear little Flo.
My troubles with Bubbles.
My heart’s all a-glow.
‘Bubbles?’ Harriet snapped out, bringing the ridiculous little song drizzling to an end.
Yes, yes, yes. This could be it. It really could be. This little old man clearly an obsessive. Psychologist’s pattern might come from a textbook, compulsively putting rhymes together. All right, he’s eighty. Eighty-one, he said. But — what was it? — still just a little bullish. Sex impulse by no means dead then. John’s instancing Saul Bellow, father at eighty-four or five. So that lightning-bolt hurled by Eros, can it have led to the Leven at dawn and the thrust-in weapon? It could, it could. What did Professor Polk say when I suggested no great force would be needed? Yes, he said. Yes.
It fits. It fits.
Chapter Nine
Harriet looked at Patrick Angus Peregrine Youngman, writer of a three-sides turbulent love letter to murdered Bubbles Xingara, tennis darling. She took from her briefcase the poem Fiona Diplock had read out at the funeral, enclosed in its transparent plastic wallet, and held it out for him to see.
‘You wrote this?’
Dapper little Angus Youngman gaped at the wallet, all the pertness abruptly sucked out of him.
‘Did you write this poem?’
‘I — I may have done. I suppose.’
‘Yes or no, Mr Youngman? Did you write it?’
‘Well, I — I wanted to pay tribute to Bubbles. She was — well, there’s been nothing like her for years in the tennis world. I mean, I’ve been keen on tennis ever since I was a boy. The pater took me to Wimbledon when I was ten. You could do that in those days. It — it wasn’t like today, thousands and thousands pushing and shoving and paying the earth to get in. And not all to see the tennis. You know, a clergyman was arrested for indecent assault there not so long ago. Clergyman, pressing up against schoolgirls leaning over a fence. What would my father have said? Letting down the cloth, giving way to ... to all that.’
Here it is. The ever-hovering cloud. But why did he bring up that case from the past? Because he couldn’t help it? Because of what some Wimbledon experience of his own a year ago, two years ago, has triggered off in his mind? Something he’s been striving to blot out?
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