Wicked Autumn (30 page)

Max nodded and said, “The Judas kiss is what really put me on the trail to Guy. Thinking of that. Perhaps it was what inspired these two, also. One thought led to the next step of wondering where she was most vulnerable. Of course, Jasper knew all about where his mother was most vulnerable.

“The aggravating thing is,” he continued, striking one fist against the arm of his chair, unintentionally disturbing Thea’s rest, “a copy of Caravaggio’s
The Betrayal of Christ
hangs in my study. I’m kicking myself because it’s something I see every day, that painting, where Judas Iscariot greets Christ with a kiss, to point him out to the soldiers waiting to capture him.” It was, he realized, a classic case of what he
thought
had happened not having happened at all. Had he really forgotten so much of his life in MI5—that hall of mirrors where almost nothing was ever as it seemed?

“Once I began to suspect how the poison was administered, I looked around for likely partners for Wanda, including the Major, of course. At least I felt certain I could eliminate the women of the village, which narrowed the field considerably.”

“What made you suspect Guy?” Cotton asked.

Maybe it was years of pretending to be someone I was not, Max thought. I could spot a phony; I was one. That he nearly hadn’t spotted
this
one bothered his pride more than he cared to dwell on. He may have hoped that in coming to Nether Monkslip, he could simply throw off his past, like shedding an old garment. But Guy’s deceit—nearly successful—chilled him. He had vowed he would never again be the reason anyone walked into danger …

*   *   *

It was so routine a matter—so beneath their skill levels—that he and Paul relaxed. Nothing to worry about: we’re covered. If anything, Max was annoyed by the assignment, while easygoing Paul just accepted it as part of the job. And now Max was even leaving early to meet a date, having taken over part of the earlier shift from Paul, who was on night duty at home with his newborn son. They would sort it all out later. Then it would be the weekend, and the Russian was leaving, to go back to his unsuspecting family in Moscow (the man seemed to have half a dozen mistresses in London). He and Paul could handle this with their eyes closed.

It was his own arrogance that he later found so appalling, so unforgivable.

Paul earlier had flipped open his wallet and turned the photo in its clear plastic frame toward Max: a red-faced gnome in a blue hospital hat, eyes not quite yet fully open, fists clenched in outrage at the many liberties taken.

“Paul II,” Paul I said, proudly.

Max made the required noises of wonder, although Paul II, like all newborns, had the look of something that had been soaked too long in beet juice.

“That’s great, man. Really great. How proud you must be. Look, I’ll see you back at the office. Get Randolph to spell you if need be—that lazy sod owes us.”

Paul, gazing transfixed at the tiny photo, might not have heard him.

“What?” Paul said at last. “Sure thing.” He turned to get into the official, anonymous silver car Max had left parked in an alley. “You need a lift? Drop you somewhere?”

Max shook his head and, thumping his stomach, said only, “Exercise.” He turned, and the last thing he heard before the blast threw him on his face was the sound of Paul starting the car.

After the explosion, he could remember very little through the haze of his concussion to help the investigation in any real way. There had been, five minutes earlier, a man standing around wearing sunglasses. They had white frames and blue lenses, making him look like an alien visitor from Hollywood or Mars, and Max remembered thinking he had appalling, juvenile bad-boy taste. But none of this was much help to the investigators. They suspected who was to blame—and one group of jackals had taken credit for it. They’d probably let them get away with it for now: that happened to fit with the policy of the moment.

He had tried to carry on as usual. Then he noticed, days after his release from hospital, a tiny stain as he pulled the linen shirt he’d been wearing that day from the laundry hamper. A pinprick of color against the white collar. It might have been anything, come from anywhere. He’d probably cut himself shaving. Or it might have been the catsup he tended to spray all over himself when opening one of those individual tear-packets for a sandwich. It probably was that, he told himself. Of course, no more than that. One of life’s daily little irritants. But he knew with a terrible certainty that it was Paul’s blood. He couldn’t wash the garment, or even throw it away, knowing that. He didn’t see what use the lab would have for it even in their grim task of re-creating what had happened, so he couldn’t somehow turn the horror into a useful tool to ram it home to the murdering bastards. In the end he folded it into a plastic bag and stuffed it into the furthest recesses of his closet. But first he wept into the fabric, as lost and heartbroken as a grieving child.

The loathing for the terrorists who had killed Paul consumed him except in his sleep, which was dreamless, a total, rapid, and welcome descent into unconsciousness at the end of each day. Clearly the only sane response, he told himself, was to sleep as long as possible—to escape the memories that awaited him, like something alive and coiled to strike, from the moment he woke. Asleep, he couldn’t hear that explosion and the looping play of his last, everyday conversation with Paul leading up to it. Sleep he did, as much as he could, for days stretching into weeks, for in the end, he had taken an extended leave of absence, after first using up all the time off coming to him. Whether he ever intended to return, he was not even now certain. Tough-guy Max, as he’d thought of himself, inured to everything brutal the job could throw at him, simply wanted to pull the covers up over himself, curl up into a ball, and forget.

*   *   *

He nearly said something of all this to Cotton, but found he could not. His throat tightened at the thought. Maybe one day. Maybe one day he could break out of the emotional straightjacket that held him fast.

In becoming a priest, he had made a conscious choice to head down a path where he could connect with others. Where he could do good on a human level, rather than on a political one. The rational part of his mind resisted the information that “sharing” the most fraught and terrifying of his memories was possibly the first step toward making that human connection.

He merely answered, “I didn’t suspect. Because of Lydia, we knew something Guy had told us was wrong. An innocent man would—probably—have told me and the police that he’d been in the vicinity of the Village Hall at a crucial time. He did not. Why not? I wondered. An innocent forgetfulness, like Noah? Or something else?”

“Even so, that alone is not evidence. People lie to me all the time, and for the stupidest reasons,” said Cotton. “Some lie to the police just on general principles.”

“I know. But then Guy came to the church to find out what I knew, and he dug himself in deeper when he tried to pretend he didn’t know about her allergies. He had told me himself he’d discussed catering a meal for Wanda. The chances she wouldn’t mention this allergy, as I told him, were zero.”

“A fact the Major confirms,” said Cotton. “He says that of course Guy had been told, ‘had been warned repeatedly’ were his words.”

“Anyway, as I say, Jasper of course knew all about his mother’s vulnerability—that includes her emotional vulnerability, as well as her physical susceptibility. But Jasper was not on the scene. He could not be on the scene, as suspicion would fall on him immediately, especially if she died soon after he’d returned from his long absence. So…”

“So, Guy moved here, set himself up, and began ingratiating himself with Wanda,” Cotton finished for him. “Moving in for the kill.”

“Not long ago,” said Max, spinning his glass between the palms of his hands, “I read of a case where a child nearly died from anaphylactic shock simply by being exposed to molecules of peanut in the air of a café. People who are susceptible can be very susceptible.”

“And not just to allergies. I wonder,” said Cotton, “how Wanda ever fell for this setup in the first place?”

“That’s the easiest part for me to understand—now. Imagine her loneliness. She had no friends in the village, and few elsewhere, to all appearances. Her marriage had become a formality at best. Her son, vanished, for all intents and purposes. I should have sensed her aloneness but frankly it was well hidden under all the bombast and busyness. Still, it’s my job to notice these things. I feel that I failed her. I did fail her.”

Cotton merely looked at him, then shook his head.

“I don’t think being perfect and all-knowing is in the job description. Leave that to your boss upstairs, why don’t you?”

Max smiled wanly, looking into the dregs of his beer. As it happened, that was good advice, if very difficult to follow.

“Let’s see,” Max said. “What else? Oh, yes. That diary of hers. Why put a star in your calendar by some dates—for the dentist, for example—and not others? Some of the dates were a blind. Some were real. As we now know, a star in her diary or calendar meant she was visiting Guy at his place over the restaurant, so seeing the doctor or dentist or hairdresser in Monkslip-super-Mare wouldn’t necessarily and didn’t always match up. Sometimes she would see both the doctor and Guy on the same day. Some days she would have no appointment on the day she said she did; some days she would. Only the star told the truth about her Guy meetings.”

“Beneath that formidable exterior beat the heart of a romantic,” said Cotton. “She did seem to enjoy the intrigue. Perhaps she saw it as harmless fun. After all, it was a flirtation, a younger man paying her the attention she craved—not really an affair. Guy is adamant about that, and I believe him—I think the whole idea of Wanda as paramour offends his ego.”

“Poor Wanda. I think you’re exactly right. She was a romantic with a highly developed sense of drama. It was a weakness to be exploited, and exploit it these two did.”

“There was another romantic touch,” said Cotton. “The figurine on the windowsill at the Village Hall.”

“He confirmed that, did he? Yes. I noticed it was facing in a different direction from the usual. I can see it from the churchyard, you know. MI5 uses that sort of signal all the time at safe houses. A safe house being, as you know, an ordinary place used by officers to meet agents. Each safe house has a system of signals to indicate whether it is clear to enter—something like an ornament in a window pointing left or right. Sometimes the direction of the ornament indicates the time of day for a proposed meeting, like a clock. If the ornament or figurine is pointed straight ahead, the meeting time is noon. If pointed with its back to the window, that means six o’clock. And so on.”

Cotton laughed. “No one but you, Max, would have noticed, or attached any significance to it.”

“But I didn’t piece that bit together until very late in the game—and even then, Guy’s actions were what drew my attention to it: he made a move to straighten up the shepherdess figurine when we discovered Wanda’s body. Wanda and Guy used it as an all-clear signal on the occasions they met up in the Village Hall. It was frequently deserted, at times Wanda would know all about, and so ideal for one of these passionate—or rather, passionless—little trysts she so enjoyed.”

“You must be right about her loneliness.”

Max nodded. “I imagine he would flatter her, soften her up. Playing up to her vanity, he made her fall in love with him by painting a picture of the life she thought she was cheated of via marriage to her boring husband. It was a courtly courtship: no doubt she saw his impeccable manners as part of his deep and abiding respect for her and their timeless ‘love’ for one another. Her ego would blind her to the fact that these corny, courtier-like manners masked his repugnance. Maybe even, in his heart of hearts, there was a feeling of self-loathing, knowing what he was going to do to her.”

“What heart?”

Max said, with sad resignation in his voice, “You may have a point. Anyway, her son wanted to be rid of her because it might be years before someone of her vitality might die of natural causes, and he wanted
all
the money she inherited from her parents to go to him. He had begun to fear she might change her mind, and her will, the longer the years of estrangement went on. She might even be able to put an entail on his inheritance via his father. Guy probably got out of her how much money was involved in her inheritance—making sure all this trouble was worth their while.”

“We have learned one interesting thing on that score,” said Cotton. “There was a young man hanging about the widowed grandmother before her death—your hunch may have been right there. From the description, it might have been our friend Jasper—a neighbor lady didn’t like the looks of things she saw going on across the lane. Funny that if it was Jasper he wouldn’t introduce himself as the grandson, isn’t it? We’ll ask him a few questions on that score, too. Having an eyewitness will be of inestimable help there.”

“Is the thinking that they hastened the old woman’s death?”

Cotton nodded soberly.

“Good heavens. Even though it occurred to me … it’s diabolical if they really did that. The level of planning involved…”

Cotton asked, “Do you think there’s a chance Guy may initially have planned simply to convince Wanda to reconcile with her son?”

“No,” said Max flatly. “I don’t. I think he and Jasper both realized that was a non-starter—and anyway, it didn’t carry the guarantee of inheritance they craved, even if she had agreed to reconcile. Wanda’s mind made up was … well, a mind made up. Utterly unchangeable. No, I think her death was in the cards from the moment the grandmother died and Wanda safely inherited. Oddly enough, the Major intimated to me that things might have swung quite another way. The ‘old lady’ was going to leave much of her wealth to the church but then became disillusioned by her new rector. Wanda’s coming into the lot was almost a fluke.”

“Unfortunately,” said Cotton, “it was a fluke she broadcast to her son in a moment of braggadocio, perhaps thinking she could dangle wealth in front of him as a bribe, a way to bring him round to being the devoted kind of son she wanted. But all it did was, as they say in melodrama, seal her fate.”