The Old Contemptibles (28 page)

After another moment or two of silence broken only by the crunch of Apted’s apple, Jury asked, bluntly, “Who’s paying for this, Sir Peter? You’re not taking on this case out of sheer love for the Met.”

Apted winced. “Sir me no sirs and my name’s ‘Pete,’ not ‘Peter.’ Actually, ‘P-I-E-T,’—Dutch—but I finally gave in to Fleet Street on the spelling. No, I’m not doing it for love; I’m doing it for money. I’ve never done anything for love in my life, a rule you might do well to follow in future, considering where it got you. As for who’s paying, that person wishes to remain anonymous.”

Jury was astonished. It couldn’t be Plant; he wouldn’t bother with anonymity; he’d just not be argued out of it.

Who? Vivian Rivington.

Vivian was a rich woman and the news had certainly hit the papers. Someone in Long Piddleton could have got the information to her. Lady Ardry had probably shot that news straight across Europe.

It was a stupid gesture, but Jury made it anyway. “I’d prefer to pay you myself.”

“Out of what? I’m not on hire-purchase, two pounds a week. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and be grateful. Some hack down the Old Bailey, and this bunch of garbage would wind up in court.” He tossed the thick file on a desk dominated by a hooded bronze figure and a framed photograph that Jury couldn’t see.

Jury could not believe that eyes the shade of weak tea could be so electrifying. His hair was the same color, his mouth thin, and his frame wiry—taut and wiry; Jury thought he was the type of barrister who would spring from his seat to confront witnesses.

“Wait a minute,” said Jury. “What do you mean
would.
This bunch of garbage
will.”

Apted shook his head, not, apparently, so much in denial, but at Jury’s dull-wittedness. “Mr. Jury, there’s only one thing I believe in.” He’d nibbled the apple down and now shied the core toward the same basket. He looked pleased that he’d hit it.

The silence that hung there implied that Jury was supposed to fill it by telling Pete Apted, Q.C., what the one thing was. “Truth.”

Apted slewed a disbelieving glance toward Jury. “Winning. Unfortunately, the truth has a way of screwing that up. So, naturally, I have to know it before I take on a case. If you
tell
me you’re guilty, I can’t defend you. But you’re not, so you won’t, so I will.”

“Then you know I had nothing to do with Jane Holdsworth’s death.”

“No. I don’t know you ‘had nothing to do with Jane Holdsworth’s death.’ ” His tone stopped just short of mimicry. “I only know you didn’t kill her. I’m amazed that this Detective Inspector—” Again, he slapped through the file. “—Kamir thinks there’s any chance you did.” He tossed the detested brief back on the desk. “You want to sue the department for suspending you? That might be fun. Higher fee, of course.” Pete Apted had a lightning smile; it struck and left.

The lawyer’s confidence in himself (legendary) flooded Jury with relief. “You read Mr. Burley’s report on Maurice Kingsley.”

Apted nodded.

Jury waited. Apted said nothing. “You think it might have been Kingsley, then? He was there.”

“Well, he’s not my concern, but offhand I’d say, hell no. He does this woman, goes out to sleep—assuming he was sleeping—on a bench and then strikes up a conversation with a kid he might or might not have recognized as her son, makes no difference, so he’ll be sure to be remembered.”

Apted had said it flatly, almost by rote, a man reciting an alphabet of common sense.

Jury was deflated. “There might be reasons for that behavior.”

Pete Apted seemed to be thinking, deeply. “Yes. He could be a cretin. All right, we don’t know all the specifics, but I repeat: I’m not defending this Dr. Kingsley. I would, however, still consider suing the Metropolitan Police.” Again that flash of a smile. He sat now with one shoe
plunk
up against the edge of the desk, rolling up his tie from the bottom like a schoolboy who wasn’t used to ties.

“I don’t want to sue the Met, and Kamir’s no fool. And please explain the difference between ‘having nothing to do with her death’ and not murdering her. I expect I’m just dim.”

Apted flashed him another one of those looks that said
no doubt,
and Jury remembered then (from accounts of the barrister’s courtroom manner) that it was one of the man’s tricks: he could shoot those looks at an adversary who had presented a perfectly cogent argument, and if the sheer weight of the expression didn’t reduce that argument to utter rubble, it at least left a large crack in it.

“Sorry. Did I say something stupid?”

“Oh, don’t apologize. I’m sure your ordinarily sharp mental processes” (there was no sarcasm) “have been dulled by an involvement with this woman.
Especially
this woman.” He did not, as Jury had seen him in his mind’s eye, spring from his chair. Pete Apted rose slowly, as if he had a great weight on his shoulders, and walked over to the window, where a weak glimmer of sun showed the dust in the material’s folds. Apted shoved his glasses on top of his head and stood in the wavering light. Without the glasses and with his profile turned that way he looked ten years younger. Or perhaps he
was
ten years younger than he’d appeared, seated and frowning over his apple and open file.

He narrowed his eyes against the morning light coming through
the window as if it were intruding, cutting across the light of his own mind. “No point in going over the obvious,” he said.

“I’m not sure what you think is obvious.”

“Same things you do,” he said, walking back to his desk, dropping himself into his chair and the glasses back over his eyes, “or they wouldn’t be obvious, right?” He realigned the large photograph on his desk with an expensive pen set Jury doubted the man ever used.

“You haven’t answered my question about her death. What’s the difference?”

“You didn’t kill her. That doesn’t mean you didn’t, oh, perhaps invite her to kill herself.”

Jury stared at him.

“For God’s sake, don’t look like that. I’m not saying you did. I merely wanted to point out how circumlocution can lead to errors of thinking.”

“Please skip the legal lecture, Mr. Apted. If I didn’t—”

Apted interrupted. “You know, in all of your talk with Detective Inspector Kamir—which, incidentally, is one of the ‘obvious’ reasons for concluding you yourself were not the perpetrator; is there anything you
didn’t
tell him?—in all of this injudicious accounting of your own actions over a two-week period, without benefit of counsel (I might add), you didn’t once mention the calendar.”

Jury hesitated. “Calendar?”

Apted sighed. “Superintendent: the one with your name and/or initials scribbled into tense little squares. The times she saw you. Dinner. Bed. Et cetera.” Apted brought his chair down with a thud and crossed his arms across the pile of papers. “If you were crazy enough to buy her a ring, you certainly thought your affections were returned. Or to put it another way: if I were fucking a lady, I
damned
well wouldn’t expect her to have to make notes on a calendar for future fucks.” He stopped and got up again and walked over to the window.

It was like a body blow. “It occurred to me.” He had tried to keep the doubts at bay. But during those hours after buying the ring, after talking with Jenny, walking through the park, sitting on the bench, he had wondered. Or tried not to wonder. “Why?” He was hardly aware he’d said it aloud.

From the window, Pete Apted answered. “She needed a cop.”

Jury looked up, surprised. “What?”

“A policeman. Someone who was thoroughly trained in investigation. So she picked you. And writing your name in on the calendar would assure her that you’d be in on the investigation, if not in charge of it.”

“She didn’t even
know
me. She didn’t know I was CID until the second time we’d been together.”

“Yes, she did.” Apted came back from his desk. “You really did blank it out, didn’t you, Mr. Jury? And I don’t think your internal affairs people are as thorough as they could be. For example: interview with Miss Palutski. Definitely a hostile prosecution witness type.” Apted smiled over the report. “ ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
Who
was in Camden Passage? Never saw her.’ Et cetera.”

“She was telling the truth. If she did see Jane Holdsworth, it didn’t register. She was too busy playing with a crown.”

“I sent my junior, Kath. Kath could run rings around some of you people. She smokes too much, drinks too much, lives like—” Apted shrugged. “—impossible to describe. But, oh, is she smart. The idea was to get Carole-anne Palutski—quite a charmer, according to Kath; she said the young lady wanted to tell her fortune, read her stars, read her mind, et cetera. Kath got Miss Palutski to
replay
the Camden Passage scene, which she did, good as any actor.”

“She thinks she is.”

“Well, she’s certainly got an actor’s recall. Ran right through it, the whole scene with the Camden Passage Fagin, dealer in antiquities fallen off backs of lorries, no doubt.” Apted
hmm’
d and
da-dah
ed his way through part of it and then said, “ ‘. . . so I says to him, ‘Don’t try and fiddle the police . . .’ and down a bit, yes, here: ‘. . . a
superintendent.’ ”
He looked over at Jury. “All within earshot. You think Ms. Holdsworth ‘accidentally’ happened to work her way round those tables?”

Jury answered quickly, “She knew someone was going to try to kill her; she knew it would be made to look like suicide.” Jury was trying. He was trying like hell.

“You were set up.”

“Don’t tell me she wanted it to look like I’d done it. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Whoever was coming to see her that night—”

“The mysterious visitor? It was this Kingsley’s misfortune that he got the wrong night.”

“Then who—?”

Pete Apted lowered his head and squinted across at Jury. “What’s wrong with the most likely explanation?”

“Which is?”

“She killed herself.”

 • • • 

Jury sat, staring at Pete Apted, who seemed already to be getting on to another case. His glasses came down, he pulled over a brief.

Jury reviewed the conversation with Kamir—the speculations, the arguments. They looked even weaker. But he resorted to “Listen. Why would a woman who was passionately happy kill herself?”

Apted shoved the glasses back up as he tossed down his pen. “Mr. Jury, if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, let’s say it
is
a duck.”

Jury repeated the weakest of the arguments. “She was dressed to go out; she was meeting someone.”

Apted rolled his eyes heavenward. “That’s what she told
you.
Probably deliberately.” His pale brown eyes burned as he leaned toward Jury. “And as far as her son is concerned, wouldn’t murder, horrible as it is, be less painful for him than suicide? Remember, ‘passionately happy’ is the way
you
saw it.” The glasses came down again; he picked up the pen. “Frankly, I don’t think you really believe that.”

Jury shifted in his chair. He didn’t, of course. “And she implicates me.”

Slapping new pages over now, Apted said, “Right. But not intentionally; I’d guess she thought no one would take the implication seriously. You
were
bedmates, after all.”

Jury was silent, watching the lawyer jotting down notes. Then he said, “Why?”

Apted looked up, suddenly. “ ‘Why?’ ” Again, he put down his pen and leaned across the desk. “My job is to protect you, Mr. Jury.” He pointed his finger directly at Jury’s chest and silently mouthed the word again:
You.
“And
you
were set up.”

Jury rose wearily. “Anything else?”

“No.” Pete Apted looked up and smiled. This time the smile
lingered. “But I think you can consider yourself back on the job. No one wants to prosecute you; you’re too well liked. Apparently.”

That seemed to be an afterthought. Jury smiled. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine this man taking silk, going through the ritual, the pomp and circumstance. “You’re pretty good,” was all Jury said.

Pete Apted, Q.C., didn’t even raise his eyes.

“What if I need you again, depending what I find out?”

“I’ll be here.”

When he walked into Racer’s office at eight-thirty, Fiona jumped, jiggling the tiny squares of paper plastering her face. “You!”

“Me. Good morning.”

Fiona immediately attempted to switch to the cool pose, extremely difficult when one was looking at a man one especially cared for at the same time one was wearing a glutinous-looking mask of paper on one’s face.

One could only try. Fiona casually picked two tiny damp squares from nearest her eyes, balling them up as Pete Apted had his sandwich wrapper, looked at them as if this familiar accoutrement to beauty was mildly annoying (but then what wasn’t?) and flicked each tiny ball toward the wastebasket, just as Apted had.

Cyril, already fascinated by the skin-thin squares, was now sliding down air from the desk to the basket. Surely, more would follow.

No. Instead, Fiona fiddled a cigarette from her pack, asked Jury for a light, recrossed her legs, and draped one arm over the back of her secretary’s chair, which movement tightened the black blouse across her breasts. “Knew you’d be back in a tic, we did. Al was just saying yesterday, ‘They’ll have him back here in a tic.’ ” Fiona was the only person on the face of the earth (Jury bet) who called Wiggins “Al.”

Cyril sat at the ready near the wastebasket, staring up at those little thin squares.

Rotten as Jury felt, there was a part of him that could barely keep his face straight. “What’re you doing, anyway?” he asked. The kettle whistled.

This was fortunate for Fiona, for it gave her something to be busy about. “Whatever do you mean?” She looked at him blankly, and then, as if surprised, said, “Oh, this? Well, it’s the newest thing, innit?” She looked at him with some disdain as she popped the teabags into cups. “But I expect you don’t follow Fergie’s and Di’s beauty routines, do you?” She grimaced, trying to make a joke of it.