by John Harvey
Old habits...
The lights were on in the house when he arrived, visible as he turned off the narrow, winding road into the lane. The girl’s bicycle was resting up against the wall close by the front door. When he had interviewed her for the post, she had hardly been able to string two sentences together, scarcely looked him in the eye; a child of her own when she was sixteen, and a few pathetic qualifications not worth the paper they were written on; clever enough, just, to ignore his mother’s eccentricities and her more abstruse requests, make her bedtime Horlicks, lift her on and off the commode in her room when necessary.
When Blaine let himself into the house, she was in one of the downstairs rooms, watching TV.
“You can go,” he said.
“But I haven’t...” She looked at him, confused. “She’ll need help to get washed and ready for bed... then there’s her bedtime drink...”
“Just go. Now. Go.”
Scrambling up her things, the girl backed toward the door. “I will still get paid, the full twelve hours?”
But Blaine had already dismissed her from his mind.
His mother was upstairs in her room, the door ajar. The locks and handles had been removed. The bathroom aside, she rarely strayed to other parts of the house.
When Blaine eased back the door, she was singing.
At first he didn’t recognize the tune and then he did.
“Alice Blue Gown.”
She had been singing it when first she met his father, some sixty years before.
A story she had told him many, many times.
Standing now as she was, before the dressing-table mirror, she turned slowly toward him, a smile frescoed on her face. The cotton robe she was wearing sagged open; her breasts, like sad, deflated balloons, hung down against her chest.
“Howard,” she said. “How nice. What a lovely surprise.”
He had written it all out by hand, pen and ink, of course, not Biro, not felt-tip; the same neat italic script as always, slight flourishes in the upper case. His confession, signed and sealed. He wanted to explain it all to her, nonetheless; unburden himself. Ask for forgiveness. Absolution.
“It’s not Howard,” he said. “Not my father. It’s me, Vincent.”
“Vincent, of course. You think I didn’t know? My own son.”
A few unsteady steps toward him and she folded him in her arms. She smelt, as she always did now, of stale urine and face powder, lily-of-the-valley.
“Come and sit here,” she said, her voice modulating into a soft, antique croon. “Sit by me on the bed. Rest your head on my lap. There. There.”
The bone of her thigh was hard against his cheek; the flesh around it had fallen away to the point at which he could have encircled it, almost, with one hand. The fingers she patted him with were swollen purple at the knuckles, otherwise thin like brittle twigs. When she ran them through his hair, did she notice it was almost as gray in places as her own?
Blaine closed his eyes.
“I’ve been less than good,” he said. “I’ve done some terrible, wicked things.”
“It’s all right. You can tell your mother. You can tell me everything.”
NOT KNOWING THE PEAK DISTRICT WELL, ELDER LOST his way twice, on one occasion having to reverse along a quarter-mile of narrow lane, a sheer drop to one side, a high stone wall to the other. By the time he arrived at the village, it was shrouded and quiet, a handful of disconsolate youths hanging around outside the only shop, trading sexual threats and cigarettes and drinking cider from a can; the shop itself was closed for the night, a pale light shining in its almost empty window.
When Elder asked for directions, they ignored him at first, and when he persisted, one of them grudgingly pointed the way before, head down, letting a slow dribble of spit falter toward the ground.
Elder parked behind what he recognized as Blaine’s car.
Moths jousted in the space between the frame and the open door.
The downstairs rooms were dark.
Elder called Blaine’s name, waited, then climbed the stairs.
The sound, faint, of singing directed him along the landing.
Blaine’s mother was sitting at the foot of the bed, her son’s head cradled in her lap. The blood had splashed up across her face and breasts and collected, dark, between her legs; her hands were steeped in it where they touched his face.
“My Vincent,” she said, looking up at Elder, “has been a bad, bad boy.”
Not trusting the two vertical cuts he had made in his wrists, Blaine had slashed one side of his throat across, from below one ear to beneath his chin. An old-fashioned open razor lay on the folds of his mother’s robe, close by her leg.
“It’s Howard’s,” she said, smiling gently as she followed Elder’s gaze. “My husband’s. He would never use anything else.”
The envelope, addressed to Elder, was resting against the dressing-table mirror, its contents clear and to the point. Elder read it twice then left the room, reaching for his cell as he went. As he stepped outside, a barn owl screeched and flew past, its white face lit up by a sleeve of moon.
FROM WHERE HE STOOD, HE GOULD SEE THE EMERGENCY vehicles, like giant fireflies, making their way slowly up the valley. Prior was in the lead car when they arrived, her face taut and pale.
“Take a look,” Elder said, inclining his head toward the house. “Tread carefully.”
The first ambulance was coming cautiously along the lane.
“My God, Frank,” Prior said, when she emerged. And then, “It’s what I think?”
He handed her the envelope, the letter.
When she had read it, they stood side by side, not speaking. Swaddled in blankets, Blaine’s mother was led slowly toward the nearest ambulance; at the hospital in Chesterfield she would be examined thoroughly, and if there was nothing physically wrong, passed into the care of Social Services.
Vincent Blaine’s body would be removed later, after the medical examiner had done his work.
One of the officers, standing a short way off, had lit a cigarette, and Elder, for the first time in years, wished he still smoked. He wished for—no, he craved, a drink. In one of the cupboards in the long, flagged kitchen, he found a bottle of blended scotch. Rinsing a pair of glasses under the tap, he poured two good measures and carried them back outside.
Prior had been reading Blaine’s confession again.
“Irene Fowler, Claire Meecham, he admits killing them, washing the bodies, laying them to rest—that’s what he calls it—laying them to rest. He says nothing about why.”
Vehicles were reversing down the lane to allow the first ambulance to leave. Disturbed, a few birds were making an unseen racket in the trees. Prior set her empty glass down on the stone and went back inside the house, leaving Elder standing there, staring out into the unchanging dark.
Chapter 42
AS IF FURTHER PROOF WERE NEEDED, ANALYSIS OF THE DNA from the hairs found in Vincent Blaine’s Dorset cottage showed a match with Claire Meecham.
Blaine had kept a trunk of his mother’s old clothes at the cottage, and, while she was there that weekend, he had persuaded Claire to wear one of her dresses—a full-length ball gown in brilliant blue. There were several photographs of her posing in it, among others found in a drawer of a small bureau at the house outside Nottingham; the expression on her face, even as she tried to smile for the camera, was one of uncertainty and concern. She was wearing the same necklace that would later be discovered on her body.
In a number of the older photographs in a family album, Blaine’s mother was shown wearing a ring that looked identical to that on Irene Fowler’s dead hand. Perhaps in her case, the ring and the facial resemblance had been enough.
Enough to tip Blaine over the edge.
What had Alice Silverman said?
Enough for the “as if-ness” to disappear. No longer a fantasy: a game. At the height of his passion with both women, Vincent Blaine had believed he was making love to his own mother.<
br />
When Elder talked later to Jennie Preston, trying, as best he could, to explain, it was as if she understood the words but not what they really meant. And she herself had changed. Although everything about her was superficially in place—the bright and perfect makeup, the hair, the clothes—her sparkle was gone. It was somehow as if, now that she knew what had caused her sister’s death, the life had been sucked out of her, leaving a richly decorated shell.
As if.
Given time, Elder thought, Jennie would bounce back; the resilience he had sensed in her would bring the spring back to her step, the brightness to her eyes. For now it was as much as she could do to squeeze his hand and thank him in a faltering voice for all that he’d done.
“YOU THINK HE REALLY DID, FRANK?” PRIOR ASKED. “Have sex with his mother when he was a lad? A youth? You think it really happened?”
“I don’t know.” Elder shook his head. “I doubt we ever will.”
They were in a pub around the corner from the Central Police Station, the occasionally raucous rise and fall of overlapping conversations sealing them in.
“If it did... If she did...” Prior was staring into her glass. “The mother... it wouldn’t have been easy... for her, I mean. She would have had to try and deal with it, too.”
“Perhaps she was more able to shut it out. Forget. Pretend it never happened. If it did.”
She looked at him. “Stuff that’s happened between you and Katherine—no, listen. Don’t get me wrong—things that have happened between you. Times you’ve been especially happy, or had a blazing row. Even ordinary things that don’t seem to matter at the time. Do you forget?”
“No.”
“Not even when you’re down in Cornwall, say? Miles away. Katherine out of sight, getting older, growing up.”
“No.”
“Christ!” Prior said vehemently. “Being a parent, having kids...”
Elder could see the tears in her eyes. When she continued, her voice was so low he had to bend his head forward to hear.
“When I was seventeen, just seventeen, I fell pregnant. This bloke, he was older, twenty-six, twenty-seven. My parents—you can imagine—they were tearing their hair out, doing everything they could think of to stop me seeing him, and, of course, that only made me want to see him all the more. True love, Frank, that’s what it was. True fucking love. And him—he didn’t give a toss about me, I was just someone to screw when he wasn’t screwing somebody else.
“Then, when the penny dropped, when I couldn’t pretend any longer, three months along—even if I’d wanted an abortion, by then it would probably have been too late. And of course, he didn’t want to know. Laughed in my face when I told him. Raised the can of whatever it was he was drinking: ‘Here’s to the little bastard’s health!’”
Prior wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“You had the baby,” Elder said.
“I had the baby. A baby boy. Six pounds, five ounces. Christopher, that’s what I called him. In my head. I don’t know what he’s called, really. I only saw him... I only saw him for...” She swallowed hard. “I only saw him for a moment, a few moments. His foot, I can remember touching his foot. With my hand. The palm of my hand.” She sniffed and for a moment turned her head away. “He was adopted. Young babies, newborns. There’s never a shortage of people waiting, can’t have kids of their own. A blessing, really.” She smiled askance through what remained of her tears. “Saves them all the hard work, mum especially. All that push, push, push. The pain.”
She picked up her glass, but it was empty.
“I could do with another drink, Frank. I really could.”
While he was at the bar, she went to the Ladies and splashed cold water on her face; reapplied some makeup, as much as she ever used. When she came back out, she looked much the same as she had earlier, restored; except to Elder she would never look quite the same again.
They sat, mostly silent, five minutes, ten; he couldn’t leave it alone.
“Are you in touch at all or...?”
A quick shake of the head.
“His adoptive parents...?”
“I don’t know where they are, where he is, anything.”
“You could find out.”
“I could put my hand in the fire. I don’t.”
Elder looked away.
“He’d be twenty-three,” she said, a moment later. “This year. A man.”
She looked bereft. Elder wanted to put his arms around her and give her a hug, but the space between them was too great.
“THIS CHAP LEONARD,” HE SAID, ONCE THEY WERE OUT on the pavement. “Ben, is it?”
“God, not you as well.”
Elder grinned. “It’s a small town, Maureen. You said so yourself.”
“There’s nothing going on, okay?”
“He seems a nice enough bloke.”
“They’re all nice, Frank. For a while.”
She had collected together the information he’d asked for: details of persistent curb crawlers, car registrations, names, addresses. Thanking her, he folded the envelope and pushed it down into his inside pocket.
“Dowland’s been kicked free?”
“Yesterday.”
“And Reardon?”
“Tail between his legs. Looking for someone to blame. Aside from himself, that is.”
“He’ll learn.”
“Let’s hope.” She rested a hand on his arm. “Frank, what I told you...”
“Not a word,” he said. “You’ve got my promise.”
“Thanks.” She squeezed his arm, then stepped away. “You sure you want to do it this way?”
“Sure.”
Prior nodded and, with a half smile, turned away.
BY THE TIME ELDER HAD WALKED UP THROUGH THE Park, it was starting to get dark. Lights showing through blinds and between partly drawn curtains. Glimpses of other lives. A wind moving the trees. There were lights in Brian Warren’s house, too, upstairs and down.
When the bell didn’t seem to work, Elder used the heavy iron knocker, shaped into a horse and rider, at the centre of the door. While he was waiting, he checked his watch.
There were footsteps inside and then a shadow on stained glass.
Bolts and then the lock.
“Mr. Elder?”
Warren was wearing normal gray trousers with a striped pyjama top, slippers on his feet.
“Not too late to call, I hope?” Elder said. “Didn’t disturb you getting ready for bed?”
“You did as a matter of fact. But come in, come on in. Always good to see a friendly face.”
Elder followed him into a long kitchen at the back of the house. There was an ancient Aga range facing the door, black paint starting to crack. A dresser, some eight feet wide, took up most of the side wall, and a large oak dining table, its top several inches thick, dominated the centre of the room. There were plates and glasses here and there, mostly clean; a wine rack stood on the tiled floor; another on the solid wooden counter above. Nearby were several bottles of port and sherry, a bottle of single malt.
Warren reached for glasses from a shelf.
“You’ll join me? Drinking in company, more pleasant than drinking alone.”
He pushed aside a pile of newspapers and magazines: the Times and the Telegraph, vintage cars and contract bridge. On top, the local paper was folded across Vincent Blaine’s picture, his gray hair surprisingly dark, a whiff of arrogance in his stare.
“Mud in your eye,” Warren said.
Elder raised his glass.
“That woman,” Warren said, “the one that was murdered. Your investigation. And the other one, too. Irene. I couldn’t believe what I read in the paper. Vincent—I mean, never in a million years.”
The whisky was a little peaty for Elder’s taste, but went down easily enough nevertheless.
“If it were only that simple,” Elder said.
“How’s that?”
“To be able to tell—at a glance.”
&nb
sp; “Even so, a man like that. Cultivated. Civilized. It’s not what you expect. And as for Anna—poor Anna. She must be gobsmacked. Shaken, too, bound to be. There but for the grace of God.” Warren added a dash more whisky to his glass. “All that time they spent together. A lucky escape.”
“Like the other night.”
“Sorry?”
“Monday of last week. Didn’t she run into you near where she lives?”
“Of course. Run into is right. Almost sent me flying. What with all this business about Vincent, it’d gone clear out of my mind.”
Elder smiled. “Your chance to play knight errant.”
“Absolutely. Not that I think she was in any actual danger. More perceived than real. Tarts, that’s what he was interested in, that fellow. Dowland, that what he’s called?”
“They’ve released him,” Elder said quietly. “The police. You’d maybe not noticed it in the paper. Tucked away among the small print, I dare say.”
“Done it before, though, hadn’t he, according to what I read? A few years back. Some kind of compulsion, that’s how it sounded. Shame, if you ask me, they ever let him out. Of course, I’d have seen the bugger hang, if I’d had my way; castrated him, at least.”
“The evening you bumped into Anna Ingram,” Elder said. “Was that when you noticed Lorraine Game first? Or had you been with her before?”
Warren was staring at him, fingers fast around his glass.
“Cars seen in the area,” Elder said, “records of curb crawlers, potential punters. I’ve been checking back through the reports. Six months. A year. More. That old Rover of yours, it turns up a number of times. Always with an excuse. On the way back from this or that. Dropping off a friend. But now the police have been out talking to the girls, showing them a description.” Elder leaned away. “You’ve been a good customer over the years.”
Some of the colour left Warren’s face. “Men my age, left alone, there’s no sin in seeking out that kind of relief, no crime.”
“When the forensic team does a proper search, they’ll find something. They generally do. Mud from the allotment on your shoes, a splash of it on your clothes.”
