Darkness & Light: A Frank Elder Mystery (Frank Elder Mysteries)

by John Harvey

  “I don’t suppose,” Christine Dulverton said, “you fancy another coffee?”

  “I’ll get them.” Elder was already on his feet.

  The place was quite full by now and he had to wait in line. The same voice was singing a song about a stolen car. They moved with their coffees to a pair of seats near the window and watched the passersby. Talked about nothing in particular, this and that. Time passed easily, pleasantly. In the end, Christine Dulverton was the one to say she had to go. On the pavement, they stood facing each other without knowing quite what to do.

  “If you’re ever in St. Albans...”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Or in the market for some jewellery...”

  “I’ll give you a call.”

  Elder phoned Maureen Prior from the car. “The file on Brian Warren—have someone dig it out for me, will you?”

  UNLIKE CHRISTINE DULVERTON, BRIAN WARREN HAD NOT moved at all. When Elder arrived that afternoon, having walked up from the Ice House, Warren was standing in the driveway of the house on Cavendish Crescent South, where he’d lived for the past thirty-five years. Wearing green Wellington boots and a pair of sagging cavalry twill trousers, a khaki sweater with holes in the sleeves, Warren was rinsing down his aging Rover with the garden hose. Dark, soapy water gurgled toward the drain. Warren signalled to Elder he’d be just a few moments more, directed the spray toward the last patches of lather clinging to the wings, and then, satisfied, switched off the hose.

  He wiped his hands down the sides of his trousers before taking Elder’s in a strong grip that belied his sixty-nine years.

  “You’ll have to excuse me earlier,” he said, “on the telephone. Not being able to recall who you were.”

  Elder gestured to show it didn’t matter. “It was quite a long time ago, after all.”

  “In which case, I should have remembered you well. It’s who I met yesterday I have problems with. Not that I met anyone, I dare say. Anyone new, anyway. Come on inside.”

  There were stained-glass panels in the front door, ornamental tiles on the lobby floor; high ceilings rich with architectural detail, and spools of dust.

  “Cleaning woman can’t reach up there, bless her soul. Getting on a bit now, like me. I could clamber up with a stepladder, but I don’t bother. Wait till it gets heavy enough to fall down of its own accord, then brush it away.”

  Elder followed him past two partly opened doors, along a wide corridor lined with small framed paintings.

  Beside a picture of a white house lodged between misted hills, Warren paused. “Watercolours. My wife, Sybil. A weekend painter, I suppose you’d say. Scotland, the Lakes. Every chance she got. I’d fish a little, play a round or two of golf, stroll. Sybil would be there all day if she could, working away at her easel, this great hat like a beekeeper’s keeping off the sun. Most of these I had framed after she passed on.”

  “They’re lovely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How long ago did she die?”

  “Ninety-five. October the seventeenth, 1995. Cancer. Mercifully quick for her. Too bloody fast for me. All the plans we’d made for what we were going to do when I retired. And then that lump was there inside her, eating away at her insides till there was nothing left. Skin and bones. I’m sorry, it still makes me angry after all this time.”

  “That’s all right, I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Warren studied him carefully. “Yes, perhaps you do.”

  They sat in the conservatory, surrounded by geraniums that were showing the first signs of new life and soon would be strong enough to stand outside. Warren had persuaded Elder to join him in a sherry, though it was a drink he would usually go to great lengths to ignore.

  “Sherry, a piece of fruitcake, and a wedge of good cheese. Helps take the edge off the day. Good single malt later on. Bit of telly. Fast off most nights by half past ten.”

  Elder sipped his sherry as slowly as he could. “You do remember her?” he said. “Irene Fowler?”

  “God, yes. After what happened? Not likely to forget.”

  “The evening itself, how well do you remember that?”

  “Well enough. Like I say, long-term memory, no problem at all.” Leaning toward the table between them, Warren cut off a corner of cheese and speared it with the prongs of the knife. “Two of them, weren’t there? Irene Fowler and a friend—Christine... Christine...”

  “Christine Dulverton.”

  “That’s it, Dulverton. She was younger. Irene, she would have been around my wife’s age. Had Sybil lived.”

  “Is that why you got on, perhaps? Irene Fowler and yourself.”

  “Did we? I suppose we did.”

  “You didn’t stay and eat with them, though.”

  “No. Vincent was hungry, as I recall; I was ready to call it a night. Left them to it.”

  “How did you get home?”

  “How? Walked, I suppose. Yes, walked. One of the advantages of living here, nowhere’s more than twenty minutes or so away.”

  “So you would have been home here by ten?”

  “I suppose so. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, no special reason. Just filling in the dots.”

  “It sounds more than that to me.”

  “How does it sound?”

  “As if you’re checking up on me. As if, pretty soon, I’m going to need to come up with some kind of alibi. Where were you between the hours of ten and midnight? Like what’s-his-name. Inspector bloody Morse.”

  “And your answer would be?”

  “Here. A nightcap most likely, and then bed.”

  “You weren’t tempted to go back to the hotel, have a nightcap there?”

  “Good God, no. What on earth put that sort of an idea into your head?”

  Elder succumbed to another piece of cheese. “When I was talking to Christine Dulverton, she suggested Irene Fowler had taken something of a shine to you.”

  Warren chuckled. “Taken a shine, had she? Poor woman. She’d have been the first and last in quite a while.”

  “I wondered if it might have gone both ways.”

  “Afraid not.” He reached for the fruitcake, which crumbled against his fingers. “One thing about reaching a certain age, a blessing to my mind, you leave all that sort of thing behind. Oh, not everyone, I grant you. One or two of my contemporaries, there’s this club they belong to, for the recently widowed and divorced. Quite a bit of matchmaking goes on there. Another fellow, older than me, wife died less than two years ago, he’s getting remarried just next month. But that’s for the companionship, you know, nothing else. Can’t stand living alone. Probably can’t sew a button or boil an egg, poor blighter. Sybil and I, we were never like that, share and share alike, chores along with the rest.”

  “So you’ve never felt the need for companionship?”

  “We were lucky, Sybil and myself, we lived a full life. I regret that it’s over, of course, but I’ve a great deal to look back on. Grandchildren, too, spread around, but I get to see them once in a while; high days and holidays, I expect you know how it is.”

  Gesturing with his hands, he inadvertently clipped the top of his sherry glass and, stooping quickly, caught it before it hit the floor.

  “Second slip,” he said, “that’s where I used to field. Good to see some of the old reflexes are still there.”

  He set the glass back down.

  “You’re not a cricket man, I suppose?”

  Elder shook his head.

  “Not many are nowadays. Test matches and these awful twenty-over farragos aside. Coloured shirts and stupid names. Aping the bloody Americans again. But go along to any county game, midweek, and it’s like a convocation of the halt and the lame. More time spent between overs talking about hernias and hip replacements than how much the ball’s turning from off to leg.”

  Sprightly out of his chair, he walked Elder out into the garden and round by the side path toward the
front of the house.

  “There was something on the radio, wasn’t there? Local news. A woman over Sherwood way? Found dead in her bed. That’s why you’re looking back at this other business, I dare say.”

  Elder nodded.

  “Well,” holding out his hand, “good luck with it.” Again the grip was strong and firm.

  Walking back through the circles and crescents of the private estate, Elder had plenty of time to think about the strength still in Brian Warren’s hand, the speed with which he had reacted to the falling glass: physical attributes quite at odds with the fading, rather old-fashioned impression Warren sought to give of himself as a man running out of energy and time.

  Chapter 18

  MANY, IF NOT MOST, OF THE STAFF WHO HAD BEEN working in the hotel on the night Irene Fowler was killed had since moved on; some of them had slipped off the radar altogether; others—a few—had proved surprisingly easy to find. The duty manager that evening was now running a small boutique hotel in the centre of the Lace Market; the concierge, a little balder, a shade more portly, was still the concierge; and the barman who had served Irene Fowler and Vincent Blaine their nightcaps, and who, at the time, had been a third-year medical student, was now halfway through his surgical rotation at the City Hospital. That morning he was assisting in an operation on a perforated bowel; if all went well, he would be free to talk to Elder between eleven and eleven-thirty.

  The traffic on the ring road was more snarled up than usual, and Elder half-wished for a flashing blue light to clear his way through. In any event, the procedure at the hospital had run into complications, and it was another half hour before Jeremy Davis appeared, effusive in his apologies and desperate for a cigarette.

  They stood outside under a limpid sky, the building bulked behind them. Davis was in his late twenties by now, early thirties, a full head of dark, wavy hair, a rugby player’s build, stocky and strong, and tired eyes. There were flecks of dried blood on his collar, possibly from where he’d shaved, possibly not.

  “Hard morning?” Elder said.

  “Not too bad.” There was a slight Welsh lilt to his voice.

  “I’m sorry to be taking up your time.”

  “That’s okay.” Davis drew smoke down into his lungs as though, perversely, his life depended on it.

  “Irene Fowler,” Elder said. “In the statement you made at the time, you said you thought she might have spoken to someone at the bar before leaving, but you couldn’t be sure.”

  “That’s right.”

  “With hindsight, you can’t remember any more than that? Any more detail?”

  Davis took another pull at his cigarette. An ambulance swung past them and slewed to a halt outside Accident and Emergency. “I’ve been trying to think, ever since you called. The danger, of course, because you want something definite, I could convince myself I saw something I didn’t. But like I said before, all I had was this impression—it was nothing more—of a woman sitting near the bar, over to the left, a table on her own, and then someone leaning down toward her, as if starting a conversation. And that’s it. That’s all. I can’t even swear that was all true.”

  “This man, though—let’s assume for a moment there was a man—was he short or tall? When you see him, in your mind’s eye, just for that moment, what do you see?”

  Davis squinted up at the sky. Cars drove up and down past them, searching slowly for somewhere to park.

  “Tall,” Davis said after several moments. “The way he was standing; not standing, more leaning over. I’d say, yes, he was tall.”

  “Fair? Dark? Balding?”

  “Dark haired, I think. But no, I can’t be sure. I could be making that up.”

  “What else about him? Was there anything else?”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. Age? How old was he, for instance? Young, old?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Well, not young, I’d be pretty certain of that. If he had been, I think I’d have noticed. That particular bar, that time of night, it’s residents in the main. Not kids, clubbers, nothing like that. It’s not on the circuit, you know? Least, it wasn’t, back then.”

  “So he’s middle aged, probably, reasonably well dressed, you don’t pay too much attention because you’re busy with other things...”

  “That’s right. I’ve got my eye on the clock, making sure all the stray glasses are collected in, getting ready to cash up.”

  “You’re busy so you don’t notice him, except that you do. Just for this moment, you do. Something draws your attention, breaks your concentration, whatever...”

  “She laughs. The woman, she laughs. When he leans across the table toward her, he says something or other and she laughs.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What kind of a laugh?” Elder asked.

  “Just ordinary, you know? Not responding to a joke, not like that. More pleasant, friendly. Good humoured, that’s what I’d say.”

  “And after that, after the laugh, what happens next? Does he sit down, join her? Have a drink? Or does she get up and go with him? What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Try.”

  “I said, I don’t know.” Davis dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and checked the watch on his wrist. “I ought to be getting back.”

  “Of course. And listen, I’m grateful.”

  “I hope I’ve helped.”

  “If you think of anything else...”

  “There’s a number I can call you? No promises, mind.”

  Elder had been into Kall Kwik earlier and ordered some cards printed with his name and cell number; for now he wrote the number on a page of his notebook, tore it out, and pushed it down into the pocket of Davis’s white coat.

  ELDER HAD JUST RETURNED FROM THE HOSPITAL AND was settling down behind a borrowed computer when Maureen Prior spun him round in his chair, her eyes bright and excitement easily discernible in her voice. The cat who had got a scent, at least, of the cream.

  “Frank, you remember that loser we were looking at for the Irene Fowler murder? Dowland, you remember him?”

  “Richard Dowland. Yes, of course.”

  The picture that came to Elder’s mind was of a sad, round-faced man with bad breath and nervous hands. Dowland had a record of minor sexual offenses—flashing, peeping Tom, stealing women’s underwear from garden washing lines. At the time of the murder he had been working as a kitchen porter at the hotel.

  “We had him in, I don’t know, four times, was it? Got himself so worked up, at one point he pissed himself, right there in the interview room, you remember that? In the end there was nothing to hold him on, nothing to link him to what happened.”

  Elder remembered Dowland’s confused state of mind, the way his words and thoughts stumbled over themselves, helplessly: the pleading in his eyes. If confessing had been an option, something to put a stop, once and for all, to the questioning, it was an option he must have come close to having taken.

  “Someone with their eye on the ball,” Prior said, “just picked his name off the computer. It seems as if our Richard has moved on from sniffing knickers and getting his kicks at bathroom windows. He was released from Lincoln a little over two months ago. Four years of a six-year sentence.”

  “What was the offense?”

  “Aggravated assault.”

  “You know the details?”

  “Enough to make it interesting. The victim was a fifty-three-year-old woman, working as a prostitute around St. Ann’s. Dowland hit her over the head, then did his best to strangle her. She struggled, someone chanced along, lucky for her, and Dowland ran off. That’s all I know so far. I’ve got a meeting with the sex offenders officer later.”

  “He’s out what? On parole?”

  “I assume so.”

  “In which case they’ll be keeping pretty close tabs.”

  “Let’s hope. Anything that puts hi
m in contact with Claire Meecham, that’s all we need.”

  Elder shook his head. “He’s suspected for the Irene Fowler murder, and now he comes out of prison just a few weeks before another woman’s killed in a similar way. It’s too good to be true.”

  “Gift horses, Frank, you know what you shouldn’t do.”

  TOM WHITEMORE HAD BEEN A SEX OFFENDERS OFFICER for three years and hated and relished it with equal measure. He hated it for what it brought him up against, rubbed his nose in, anything to do with kids, especially. That was what got to him the most, the things that could happen to children, some of them so young that even to think of it for a moment fetched bile to the back of your throat. What he relished was seeing the men—they were mostly men, but not all—seeing the men who did those things taken off the streets, locked up inside, and when they got back out again, controlled, looked after, kept, as far as possible, out of harm’s way. It was a job that needed doing, and for as long as he could stand it, it was what he would do.

  “How much longer, Tom?” his wife would ask, and he’d reply, “I don’t know, another year perhaps, six months, then I’ll chuck it in. Transfer to fraud. Or traffic, maybe.” And laugh.

  And each night, no matter what time he got home, he would go into the twins’ bedroom and stand beside their beds, watching them sleeping, five-year-old twin boys.

  He shared his office with three others, their desks heavy with papers and files, unwashed mugs pushed up against keyboards and computer screens, filing cabinets full to overflowing, action plans and Home Office directives pinned to the wall.

  Shirtsleeved, tousle-haired, he levered himself half out of his seat and stretched forward to shake Maureen Prior’s hand.

  “Throw that stuff off the chair and sit yourself down. Get you anything? There’s a machine out in the hall.”

  “Thanks,” Prior said, with a shake of the head. “I don’t want to take any more of your time than’s necessary.”

  “Okay. I had this—where is it now?” He rummaged on his desk. “I had this printed out.” Finding the pages lodged underneath something else, he pulled them free. “The broad outline’s there, you’ll see. Because of the nature of his offense, Dowland’s file was forwarded to the Public Protection Team prior to his re-lease. The assessment was that though, on balance, he was thought fit for release, there was still some danger he might offend again. So there were conditions laid down, restrictions on his movements. He has to report to his probation officer twice a week, also to me. Regular sessions with a community psychiatric nurse. You know the kind of thing.”