A Death of Distinction (6 page)

‘Why did Davis make these threats? Did he have a special grievance?' Abigail was asking.

‘They all think they've a grievance,' she answered drily. ‘But he was an incorrigible troublemaker, and a bully. He was segregated more times than you've had hot dinners. He's always had a general intolerance of any kind of authority, a total non-acceptance of his need for punishment. Another who thought he was being discriminated against.'

The profile seemed to fit. An anarchic personality, a bomb. ‘Is Davis capable of holding on to a grudge?'

She laughed shortly. ‘Oh yes, more than most. Vindictive – and deep. He'd wait for his chance, all right.'

It was the sort of vengefulness most people connected with the law encountered. Mayo had come across it himself, more than once. ‘I'll get you for this, one day,' was a threat he'd heard more times than he could count, down the years. Maybe he was just lucky that so far it hadn't materialized.

‘Hm. Tell me about this proposed new wing, if you will. I gather there are objections to it from outside.'

She took the change of direction in her stride, though he sensed she was less comfortable with it. ‘Not only outside! I wasn't for it, myself, because as I see it, it's only a cosmetic answer to the problem. It would help, but not much. Frankly, the whole place needs a bomb under it, and rebuilding.'

It was, in the circumstances, an unfortunate turn of phrase, and she made a rueful face. But if there was compassion – and he wasn't necessarily questioning that – it was well hidden. He said merely, ‘Is that likely? Rebuilding, I mean.'

‘Unfortunately, no, at the moment, and as long as we contrive to make do with this sort of piecemeal solution, it never will be. Funds won't be made available for anything better. Mr Lilburne didn't agree with that, however. He was more inclined to go for what I see as the short-term advantage.'

‘Half a loaf?' Mayo suggested.

‘And look where that sort of thinking in the past has got us. A hotch-potch of buildings –' She broke off, spreading her hands.

‘Well, you've only to look.'

She said what she thought, Ms Reynolds. She was a cracker to look at, she had a clear skin and large blue eyes, she smiled often, but he was not charmed. The concept of her attractiveness as a spur to wangling a few minutes in her company was fast losing ground, as far as he was concerned. In contrast to the cheerful young woman who'd guided them here, it was gradually being borne in on him that beneath the softly rounded bosom in the rust-coloured suit could beat the heart of a female Gauleiter.

She looked covertly at her watch, a gesture not lost on Mayo. He chose not to see it. ‘What about the local residents who're objecting to this scheme?' he asked.

After a pause, she said, ‘They
are
objecting strongly – and groundlessly, of course – but I can't see them going to the extent of putting a bomb under his car to put their point across.'

‘Possibly not.' This wasn't something worth arguing about at the moment. ‘How did Mr Lilburne get on with his staff? Was he easy to work with?'

‘I never found any difficulty.'

That wasn't an answer to the question. She was beginning to show signs of an underlying obstructiveness, though he'd have put money on it that Claudia Reynolds was normally the type to make it in her way to get on with anyone if it suited her, on the surface.

‘What about personal involvements – enmities?'

A tumbler of water from which she'd been drinking stood on the table, and she reached out a hand to take another sip, perhaps to give herself time. Unfortunately, she wasn't looking as she did so and her sleeve brushed against the glass, knocking it on to the hard composition floor, where it broke with a crash, the glittering fragments scattering in a wide arc. She gave a little cry and immediately sprang from her chair to clear it up.

‘Watch you don't cut yourself,' Abigail warned, but she was too late. Claudia Reynolds was looking with horror at a cut on her index finger and had turned as white as paper, though it was little more than a scratch, so slight, in fact, that the blood was having difficulty in oozing out. A few tiny red drops on the white skin of her manicured hand was all that could be seen, but, looking at them, she gave a soft little moan and fainted dead away.

‘Was it something I said?' Mayo wondered aloud, sitting beside Abigail as she drove him back to the station with the competence that characterised everything she did – and which was why she was sometimes resented by those of her male colleagues who couldn't measure up to her standards, most of whom she'd skimmed past, barely touching ground on her way up to the coveted position of detective inspector. ‘Or did it just prove she was human after all? Cut her, and she bleeds ...'

‘Rather clumsy diversionary tactics – knocking the glass over, I mean.' Abigail drew smoothly up to a set of traffic lights. ‘The faint was real enough though, wasn't it? She's obviously one of those people who can't stand the sight of blood. Blood phobia must be a bit of a hazard in her line. But knocking the glass over ... I think there was something she just wanted to avoid at that moment.'

‘Personal relationships? That's what we were talking about just then. Was there something going on between her and Lilburne?'

‘Nothing amorous if there was,' Abigail said drily.

That had been obvious, but the conversation with Claudia Reynolds had been unsatisfactory all ways, Mayo reflected. She was prickly, to say the least – a woman in what was very much a man's world, who hadn't yet learned how to cope with it gracefully, though he was damn sure she wouldn't have thanked him for thinking that. Perhaps that was the reason she'd drawn in her horns about Lilburne. He felt she could have said a lot more, had she been so inclined, and whether it was relevant or not, he'd have been better pleased to have heard it – to know what it was she'd kept silent about, and why.

Flora woke with a dull, throbbing pain in her head. Her eyelids felt weighted, it was a tremendous effort to open them. When she did, she saw a white coverlet on a high narrow bed, pulled taut across her feet, flowery curtains and shiny, cream-painted walls, a sink in the corner and an open door into a corridor, from whence she heard the squeak of rubber tyres on plastic tiles. There was a smell like none other, compounded of fish and antiseptics and polish, which immediately told her where she was, but not why. Slowly, she turned her glance sideways and saw her mother sitting by the bedside, her head bent; she shut her eyes again, terrified of remembering something unspeakable and as yet unrecalled on the edge of her consciousness. The room swam around her, and presently, she slept once more.

Mayo still hadn't become used to his flat being so spruce, though anywhere where Alex Jones lived was destined to be tidy. It had been perhaps the tiniest thing on the debit side of her coming to live with him – the fact that he'd have to put his clothes away, and his shirts and socks out for washing on a regular basis, not just when he'd come to the last clean ones. But on the credit side, he could see the difference – a home, as opposed to a bachelor pad. There was something to be said for having it dusted and polished and cared for, and not to have to face a sink full of washing up every time he came home. It wasn't perhaps as pristine as Alex would have kept it, left to herself. Mayo was gradually educating her otherwise. She now occasionally left a cushion rumpled.

It had been a day and a half, and wasn't finished yet.

Moses, the old grey cat who belonged to his landlady, but thought he ought to belong to Mayo, was waiting outside his door as usual when Mayo arrived home, in the ever-optimistic but never-to-be-fulfilled hope that one day he might be allowed inside. ‘Hard luck, mate,' Mayo said, closing the door on his jealous miaow as Bert the parrot squawked out his usual low-class greeting from inside.

He knew Alex was off duty and was looking forward to a welcome from her, to the hopeful prospect of savoury odours coming from a meal simmering to perfection point in the oven while he sipped a single malt. Some music, perhaps, the latest acquisition, with his feet up for half an hour on the old sofa whose ancient springs had learned to accommodate themselves to his shape.

The whisky was there, but Alex was not, and the flat smelled only of the spicy bowl of potpourri on the coffee table. He read the note she'd left, informing him she'd be home shortly, there was cold food left ready for their meal in the fridge. Shrugging philosophically, he poured himself a judicious slug of Glenfinnan and crossed to the sofa, which was also not there.

He stood contemplating its replacement. Lois, he thought.

When Alex had finally agreed to live with him, they'd decided on his flat rather than hers because it was bigger, and had agreed to pool resources and so keep the best of both worlds. Mayo, not caring one way or another, had left the choice of redecorating it to Alex, with professional help from her sister Lois, who was an interior decorator. He, Mayo, was merely the one who slapped the paint on. Now that they'd finished decorating it and Lois's desire to go the whole hog with ‘amusing' furniture and dramatic lighting effects had been tempered by Alex's insistence on a comfortable mix of old and new, it looked unbelievably smart and coordinated, with even the parrot matching the colour scheme (though he fancied he'd seen Lois casting a speculative eye on him more than once). He had to admit it was an improvement on the all-over magnolia job he'd walloped on when he moved in because he couldn't think of anything else.

He was becoming accustomed to seeing familiar pieces of furniture disappear and to stumbling over others he'd never seen before, but he was so bemused with joy that Alex was actually here at last, in his flat and sharing his bed, that he'd made not a murmur. The only thing he'd drawn the line at was interference with his collection of old clocks, which were sacrosanct.

And the sofa.

Though to be fair he hadn't actually stipulated this last item. He'd have thought Alex would have
known.
He'd had it since before he was married, and it was second-hand then, but it was deeply comfortable and it had been the first piece of furniture he'd ever bought. There was a lot of history in that sofa.

This one was as stylish as the rest of the decor, pretending to be a Victorian chaise longue, with a curved, buttoned end and a carved wooden back. It was stuffed as tight and unyielding as a Christmas turkey. It was velvet. It was
rose pink,
for God's sake.

And it was undoubtedly Lois's choice. Sometimes he wondered which sister was supposed to have moved in with him.

There had been an improvement in relations between him and the spiky Lois since she'd been involved in the Fleming case, a particularly nasty murder he'd had to investigate two or three years ago, but he couldn't yet feel she approved of him entirely. He still felt it was her influence which was partly responsible for Alex refusing to marry him, never mind all this bollocks about wanting to keep her independence. There was also a question hanging over Alex's professional future. Did she want to stay in the police service or would she – the latest proposal – yield to Lois's continuing pressure to join her in her interior-decorating business?

He went to set the new dining table with the new table mats and the new cutlery and then, as a gesture to his own independence, swept them away and set out the old stainless-steel knives and forks on the kitchen table.

‘I don't know what you're making such a fuss about,' Alex said when she came in five minutes later. ‘It's only gone to be recovered, and resprung. It'll be back in a week.'

‘Oh.' Mayo wasn't so sure about the respringing. ‘It won't be too hard?'

‘Feather and down cushions.'

‘Not rose pink?'

Alex burst out laughing. ‘You surely didn't think this –
boudoir
piece – was permanent? Would I do that to you, Gil? It's on loan from Lois, until the other's ready.'

He felt a fool. He could just hear Lois, in that brittle, particularly infuriating manner of hers: ‘Well, really, Giles!'

But Alex was saying, ‘Well, we've more to talk about than that old sofa. What a day it's been for you – Superintendent!' She gave the impish grin that had first made Mayo see distinct possibilities for letting herself go behind the cool exterior she presented to the world.

‘Hey, just because you live with me doesn't give you the right to get uppity, Sergeant Jones.' He grinned. ‘And the day's not finished yet, not by a long chalk. ,I've only come home for a couple of hours – to get out of this gear, have a shower and something to eat, then I'm off again.'

Alex also being in the police, he could announce these sort of intentions without fear of sulks or recriminations. Just as he could talk about his current cases without the risk of being either indiscreet or boring. She was as interested as he was in the present one.

‘How is she – Flora, the daughter?' she asked when they were sitting down to carefully sliced cold chicken and a beautifully prepared but boring salad, with a jacket potato done in the microwave by way of a bonus. Alex might be his dear love but her best attributes didn't lie in inspired cooking – that was left to his daughter, Julie. Mayo lived in hopes that, one day, she might turn up from Australia or Outer Mongolia, or wherever her next letter said she was living at present, and give Alex some lessons, but meanwhile good plain cooking was the most he ever got. He put more dressing on to his salad and kept mum, like Alex when she'd seen the table set in the kitchen. Perhaps they were both learning.

‘Flora Lilburne?' he repeated. ‘She's OK – but incredibly lucky – concussion and minor cuts and bruises, that's all. Shock, of course. She must've walked away from the car seconds before it blew up.'