by John Harvey
“I nearly didn’t come, you know,” Patricia Fowler said. “This job. Here, in the city.” Though she was married, she’d kept her family name. “They ask you, when you come for the interview, if we offer you the post will you accept? And for a moment I couldn’t answer. Stupid, really. But Mum being killed here and whoever did it...” She shook her head. “Of course, in the end I said yes. You have to put these things behind you, don’t you? Move on. And now here you are telling me the case has been reopened...”
“Not that exactly.”
“You’re looking into it again. Asking questions.”
“Yes.”
“Trying to find some connection with this other murder.”
“Yes.”
She turned toward him. “You think it might be the same person?”
“We don’t know.”
“Oh God! You’re all so tight-lipped, aren’t you?” Colour flushed her cheeks. “Never giving anything away.”
“It’s not that.”
“That’s the way it seems.”
“If there was anything definite to tell you, I would.”
“Then why tell me anything at all?”
“Courtesy?”
“Just that? No more questions?”
Elder smiled. “Maybe one or two.”
There was a constant hum of sound, punctuated by occasional laughter, coming from the rooms to either side. Patricia Fowler got down and walked to the teacher’s desk for her bag. She was tall, taller than her mother had been, slimmer, too, but with a distinct resemblance about the face, a strong nose, dark eyes set closely together. She took out a roll of mints from her bag, slipped one into her mouth, and offered one to Elder, who refused.
“What do you want to know?” she said. “What can I possibly tell you now?”
“I’ve been wondering—I didn’t think this at the time, not as seriously as perhaps I should—but I’ve been wondering if whoever your mother met at the hotel, if it was somebody she already knew.”
“From business, you mean? Someone at the conference?”
“No, not that.”
“Because I thought you checked everyone who’d enrolled?”
“We did. But, no, I was thinking about someone with whom she might already have had some kind of a relationship; someone she’d arranged to meet. Or maybe your mother had told someone where she was going to be and he decided to turn up out of the blue, surprise her.”
“And then he killed her,” Patricia Fowler said. She walked to the window and stared out. The rain was steadier now, less heavy, beginning to slacken off; some lightening in the sky above the golf course to the west. “As far as I know,” she said, “she wasn’t seeing anybody. Not then. Not that I was aware of.”
Elder nodded. The two men Irene Fowler was known to have had relationships with since her divorce had been questioned and found to have unshakeable alibis.
“If there had been somebody,” Elder said, “somebody new, would she have told you, do you think? Sometimes, where that sort of thing’s concerned, parents and their children, it can be a little awkward.”
A smile wrinkled the lines around Patricia Fowler’s eyes. “Well, we didn’t exactly swap chapter and verse. But after—you know, after Dad—I think anything else for her was pretty much a revelation. So, yes, it was something we talked about.”
“And she hadn’t mentioned that she’d started to see someone else?”
“No.”
The voices were louder now, at the other side of the classroom door.
“The two people she had been involved with,” Elder said, “she’d met them both through work, is that right?”
“Where else was she going to meet someone? I mean, she’s not exactly going to go out clubbing, is she?”
“How about personal columns, the small ads? The Internet, something like that?”
“No, no way.”
“People surprise us sometimes.”
“Yes, but Mum... No, never in a million years.”
“Okay.” Elder slipped to his feet. The sounds of impatience from the corridor were growing louder still.
“This recent murder,” Patricia Fowler asked. “Is that how she met him? Whoever it was. Through the Internet?”
“I’m afraid I can’t really say.”
“Not that you’re being tight-lipped.”
“Not at all.”
The door burst open and the first of thirty or so fourteen-year-olds came stumbling in, others pushing noisily behind.
“Well,” Patricia Fowler said, “if you’re that anxious, I suppose you’d better all come in and sit down.”
A doe-eyed girl with the waistband of her skirt rolled over too many times looked from Elder to Patricia and struck a pose. “Really, miss, you could do better than that.”
THE PUB WAS SET BACK OFF THE INNER RING ROAD, MIDWAY between the Force Crime Directorate HQ and the city centre. Red brick and beams, the once-fashionable Tudor roadhouse look. So far the landlord had held off any kind of refurbishment: the flock wallpaper in the lounge bar brought to mind an Indian restaurant circa 1964, and the floors throughout, instead of being stripped back and sanded clean, were still covered in the same well-worn patterned carpet that gave with a telling softness, almost a squelch, beneath the feet.
Most of Maureen Prior’s team were in what the locals still called the snug, debating the whys and wherefores of Forest’s relegation from the championship, who to bless and who to blame. Prior herself was standing with Elder, close against the main bar, while behind them a man with a walleye called bingo numbers from a small electronic board. Whenever anyone ventured out of the function room in search of the Ladies or, more usually, the Gents, a snatch of sprightly, slightly old-fashioned jazz followed them through the door.
“Another Jameson, Frank?” Prior asked.
Elder nodded. There was a time, evenings like this, he would have chased it down with a pint of best, but nowadays beer left him feeling bloated and he stuck to shorts, a glass of water on the side to help it on its way, ameliorate the effect.
“Dowland,” Elder said, once they’d found a quiet corner, “how did it go?”
“Jumping at false hopes there, I think.”
Elder nodded; he’d sensed that her excitement from earlier in the day had abated.
“It’s difficult to see Dowland and a woman like Claire Meecham in the same universe,” Prior said, “never mind the same room. The same bed beggars belief.”
“He could have attacked her, nonetheless.”
“She wasn’t raped, Frank. Consensual sex, remember?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“In his head, maybe. But, Frank, you should see him. He was a mess before, but now...” She let the thought trail away.
Around the corner of the bar someone shouted out as they scored their pen through the final missing number.
“Scrub him off the board, then?” Elder said. “Or wait a while and see?”
“I want to talk to the woman he attacked. See if I can’t find out a little more about what went on.”
“She’s still around?”
“Apparently. And I’ve arranged to see Dowland’s psychiatric nurse, though that’s probably a waste of time. Pretty much forecast what he’s going to say now. Dysfunctional this, dysfunctional that: bullied at school, likely buggered at home. Usual set of reasons. Excuses.”
“Doesn’t mean they’re not true.”
She fixed him with a look. “Getting soft in your old age, Frank?”
“No more than you’re going the other way.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No, not really. You’ve always been a hard woman, Maureen. A hard copper.”
“Thanks.”
Elder laughed. “About the only person I know who thought the Taliban’s hearts were in the right place.”
The function room door swung open again, the band squeezing every ounce out of “Take the A Train,” and there was Charlie Resnick
, detective chief inspector, walking toward them, glass in hand.
“Not interrupting anything, am I?” he said, smiling.
“Case conference, Charlie,” Maureen Prior said. “That’s all.”
“Meecham murder?”
“That’s the one.”
Resnick nodded. “Up from the West Country for a spell, Frank? Helping out?”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“Frank here,” Prior said, goading softly, “has gone west in more ways than one. Fully-paid-up member of the liberal Left.”
“Good to hear it,” Resnick said, and winked. “Not many of us still around.”
“Get you a top-up, Charlie?” Prior said.
“Some other time. I’ve got to be off home.”
“Lynn keeping you on a tight rein these days?”
“Something like that.”
A few more pleasantries and he was away, a heavy, broad-shouldered man who still moved, nonetheless, with a certain grace.
“They’re still together, then?” Elder said when Resnick was out of earshot. “Him and his young DS? More than just a fling?”
“Staying power, Frank. Stickability. Some people have it, some don’t.”
It was time to change the subject, Elder knew.
BACK IN HIS RENTED FLAT, SURROUNDINGS STILL strange, Elder flicked through the usual gamut of channels on the TV before switching it off. The lights of the city burned bright outside. On the radio, someone was talking about the war in Iraq, a war that had been won months before and yet still more people were dying every day. Reflected in the darkened window, an almost featureless face looked back at him, more like his father’s than his own. Staying power, Frank. Some people have it, some don’t. He picked up the phone and was midway through dialling Joanne’s number before he stopped. I’ve been seeing him again. Martyn. I’m sorry... Should he have forgiven her, then? Five years before. I’m sorry... Forgiven them? Turned, as it were, the other cheek? For better, for worse. Instead he had torn the covers from the bed where they had slept and then, not satisfied, smashed the very bed itself. Decamped into a hotel with a bottle of Irish whiskey and drunk himself insensible. Years ago now, yet not so many. Five. Five years. Not so long out of a life, a marriage. He poured himself a drink and dialled the number again; stood there, staring at his reflection, listening to it ring and ring.
Chapter 20
THE DAY HAD STARTED OFF BRIGHT BUT COLD, JET trails arcing across the sky. There’d been a time, Elder remembered, when, as a young man, he had looked up and wished himself on board and bound for America, Italy, or Spain. Almost anywhere: anywhere he’d never been. A time when he had imagined himself at the airport, staring up at the departures board, passport in hand, watching the names click round: San Francisco, Barcelona, Rome. Not knowing how to choose. Now Paris was a few hours away by rail and lads went to Tallin or Barcelona for a weekend on the piss, much as he might have gone to Newcastle or Leeds. And scores of kids with backpacks were beginning their gap year in Prague or Helsinki, Sydney or the Great Barrier Reef.
The first time he and Joanne had gone abroad together, 1981, the year before they married, it had been to a jerry-built hotel on the Costa del Sol, a package holiday, all they could afford. Joanne in her bikini on the beach. English food served here.
Fish and chips. Full English breakfast. Warm beer. Skegness with mosquitos and added sun, less wind. On the fourth day, she’d come down with some kind of bug and spent the remainder of the week in bed.
Elder turned left off Bridlesmith Gate and came to a standstill outside the salon. Gut and Dried. Frosted glass across half the window. Lights on inside. If Joanne were there or not, he couldn’t see.
When he pushed open the door, faces turned toward him.
Soft, rhythmic music played.
“Em, I was looking for Joanne. I don’t know...”
“Frank!” Like some siren in an old-time movie, she stepped through from the rear of the shop, out of the shadows and into the light. Pink, perfect, smiling. “Come in for a restyling? It’s never too late.”
“No, I thought...” He looked, somewhat helplessly, toward the door.
Amused, she took his arm and ushered him back outside. “Everything’s all right?”
“Yes. I just thought, you know, I’ve hardly seen you and...”
“Coffee?” She was looking at her watch, slim and stylish on her slender wrist. “I could meet you at eleven, a little after.”
“No. I was thinking maybe dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes, you know, a meal somewhere...”
“You mean, like a date?”
“No. Just, well, dinner. A chance to talk.”
“All right.”
“Tonight, then? If you’re free.”
“Tonight? Oh, Frank, I don’t know if I can.”
“Okay. Never mind. It was just a thought.” Head down for a moment, hands in pockets, he stepped away. “Maybe some other time?”
“Yes, of course. Some other time. I’d like that, I really would.”
Another moment and she had gone back inside.
Smarting, embarrassed, Elder turned toward the street and began to walk the way he’d come.
Drawing level with Waterstone’s, he saw a face he recognized. Vincent Blaine in a green corduroy suit, lifting a book down from the display, then turning toward Elder as he approached. “Mr. Elder, a surprise.”
“We do read books, you know.”
“We?”
“You know what I mean.”
The particular book Blaine was holding was large and, Elder guessed, expensive. “Matisse,” Blaine said, “the new biography.”
Elder shook his head.
“Amazing, that he was still alive into the 1950s. Ten years, almost, after the end of the war. It’s difficult sometimes not to think of him as belonging to another century.” He smiled, catching his mistake. “But then, of course, he did. So did we all, that century and this.” He set the book back on its shelf. “Time, Mr. Elder, it leaves us all behind.”
“I was going to contact you,” Elder said. “Something else I wanted to ask.”
“Ask away. I’m meeting Anna in a short while, but until then...”
“That night at the hotel, when you left Irene Fowler in the bar...”
“Yes?”
“You don’t remember, as you were leaving, anyone approaching her, her table?”
“No.”
“Or hearing her laugh? You don’t recall hearing someone laugh?”
Blaine shook his head. “Not particularly, no.”
“And nothing she said, before you left, suggested she was expecting someone?”
“No.”
Elder nodded. “Your friend Brian Warren, that evening, how would you say he and Irene Fowler got along?”
Blaine gave it a little thought. “Well enough, I suppose.”
“No more than that?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Christine Dulverton, the other woman who was there, she seemed to think they’d hit it off pretty well.”
Blaine’s face took on a supercilious smile. “One thing I’ve discovered about women, Mr. Elder, they have an ability to find romance, even intrigue, breeding in the most unlikely soil.” He took a half step away. “You’ve met Brian Warren, I take it?”
Elder nodded.
“Not the most fertile ground for romantic fantasy, I should have thought. And as for anything else...”
“Anything else?”
“Mr. Elder, Brian Warren is not a violent man. A few dead birds on the glorious twelfth, salmon hauled out of some highland stream, those are all very well. Within his natural orbit, shall we say. I also believe that when it comes to bridge, he takes no prisoners. But if you were for one moment considering the possibility that he returned that evening for an assignation that became something darker, I would urge you to think again.”
&
nbsp; Elder extended his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Blaine. Thank you for your time.”
Compared to Warren’s handshake, Blaine’s was deft and light, as if contact with another person in that way was not something he enjoyed at all.
MAUREEN PRIOR MET EVE WARD IN A CAFÉ ON THE ALFRETON Road, last year’s calendar still on the wall. Two rows of four Formica-topped tables with only a narrow space between. An elderly Rastafarian stood behind the counter, polishing, with infinite slowness, a battered metal teapot. The only customers, Eve Ward aside, were two young men in hoodies, who got up as Prior entered and pushed past her on their way to the door.
“Some people,” the Rastafarian said, “don’t feel comfortable with anyone they think might be police.” He smiled at her through broken teeth.
Prior assumed that rather than sniffing out her profession from the way she held herself or her self-effacing way of dressing, they had recognized her from a previous occasion. But you could never tell.
Eve Ward was sitting close against one wall, flesh loose on the bones of her face, lipstick bravely rather than wisely applied, her hair hennaed and roughly combed. She was wearing a dark wool coat that had seen better days and, beneath it, a mauve cardigan fastened with a safety pin. Chipped red polish on her nails.
Prior introduced herself and, after asking the other woman what she wanted, ordered two teas. “It was good of you to agree to see me,” she said, sitting down. “I won’t take up any more than’s necessary of your time.”
Eve Ward coughed and lit a cigarette. “What you want to waste your breath over that twisted bastard for beggars bloody belief.”
Without ceremony, their teas arrived.
“I wondered if you could tell me about what happened? The night you were attacked.”
“He went bloody crazy, didn’t he? Smacked me round the head and then tried to bloody strangle me. The bastard! Shame he’s not still rottin’ away inside.” She touched her finger ends gently against one side of her head. “Headaches I get all the time. Gettin’ worse instead of better, an’ all. Doctor says there’s nothing she can do, aside from give me pills. Hurts so much sometimes, I want to take a fuckin’ knife and gouge it out.”
