Amagansett (23 page)

He told her about the Professor and his beaky nose and their games of chess and the gut-rot hooch they used to buy from the officers’ mess—alcoholic footwash destined for the brass, but distilled through bread and flogged off to the rank-and-file by the batmen. He told her about the low, menacing profile of a Tiger tank, the silence of an 88 shell as the sound struggled to keep up with it, the spine-chilling shriek of the Nebelwerfer rockets, and he tried to describe the helpless terror of a sustained artillery barrage, bent double in a slit trench, the ground quaking, shaking your fillings loose.

He told her about the friends who had died, the ones who had cracked up and been shipped out, the ones who had been maimed. He described the horrors of the ‘far ward’ at the field hospital, nurses holding cigarettes to the mouths of men who had lost their arms, others with whole parts of their faces missing, being fed ground liver squeezed through a tube.

He told her what he had done to the men who might or might not have been responsible for the Professor’s death, and he described their triumphal entry into Rome a few days later. He detailed the baroque splendor of Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence perched high above the shores of Lake Albano where they were sent to recuperate for a few weeks. Unreal afternoons spent lazing on the volcanic sand beaches of the lake, swimming in the aquamarine water, sipping crisp dry Frascati wine from the nearby hills and flirting with the local girls. Dreamlike
memories they desperately clung to when their orders finally came through and they found themselves back in the thick of the action—in France this time, clearing Germans from a scattering of islands off the south coast, then fighting their way eastwards along the Riviera, securing the border with Italy, where the mountains collided with the sea and where Conrad’s war came to an abrupt end.

He told her how it happened, though not why, because he wasn’t sure of the answer himself, even then. All he knew was that war left you clinging to the raft of your own sanity, not because of the horror—that, you grew used to—but because it tore at the heart of every man’s being, his sense of who he was.

You could be brave one minute, a coward the next, selfless then cruel, compassionate and heartless within moments of each other. You spent a lifetime forging a view of what made you tick, what marked you out from other men, massaging yourself into being. Then war came along and ripped that construct limb from limb. It seized you by the neck, pressed your face to the mirror and showed you that you weren’t one thing or another, but all things at the same time. The only question was: which bit of you would show itself next? That’s what fucked you up. The not knowing.

He told Lillian all this. It was far more than he had ever told anyone, though that wasn’t saying much. The only other person he had spoken to was the doctor at the hospital in England, and that had been under duress.

When he was finished, Lillian held him tight and kissed him on the neck, her cheek wet with tears, cold against his skin.

‘It’s okay now,’ she said.

And he had laughed, not in derision, not in amusement, but because she was absolutely right.

It was.

Wakeley waited till she was cleaning the bedrooms on the south side of the house before making his way outside to her car.

Returning to the study, he left the door ajar, and when she came downstairs he called to her.

‘Rosa.’

She deposited her mop, pail and other cleaning items at the door and entered. ‘Mr Wakeley.’

‘Would you make some coffee, please?’

‘Of course, sir.’

He didn’t want coffee, but he hadn’t quite finished reading the file, and he needed all the facts at his fingertips before springing it on her.

Rosa returned ten minutes later with a tray. He took a bite of a cookie while she poured the coffee from the pot. Unprompted, she stirred in half a teaspoon of sugar. She noted and remembered that sort of thing. It was the kind of attention to detail he demanded of himself and appreciated in others.

‘Rosa.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Why don’t you tell me about Miss Lillian and the fisherman, Conrad Labarde?’

‘Excuse me?’

She was almost convincing.

‘No doubt she swore you to secrecy, and I respect your loyalty, I do, but I need to know, Rosa.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know what you’re saying.’

He got to his feet, crossed to the door and closed it. ‘I don’t have much time,’ he said, turning back, ‘so let me put it another way. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll have you arrested for stealing.’

‘What? I have never—’

He interrupted her, raising his hand. ‘Please, spare me the indignation, I know you haven’t. But the police might see things differently when they find certain articles of Miss Lillian’s hidden in your car.’

She glared at him.

‘You can deny it, of course, but who do you think will believe you? Who do you think will hire you after such a scandal?’ He paused. ‘Am I making myself clear?’

She nodded, making no attempt to mask the hatred in her face.

‘Now, why don’t you tell me everything you know about Miss Lillian and this Conrad Labarde.’

Manfred and Justin returned from the Maidstone Club around six o’clock. They were flush with victory, Justin having chipped in at the eighteenth to take the match for them, and they insisted on a bottle of Champagne by way of celebration.

‘We’ll have it by the pool, please,’ said Wakeley to Rosa.

The poor thing was in turmoil, but he’d made it clear to her that it wouldn’t be in her best interests to do anything foolish like resign her position. There was no reason for the Wallaces to suffer because of the bad feelings she now harbored towards him.

He was pleased to see she’d come round to his way of thinking over the course of the afternoon—in between the bouts of tears—her only protest being the brusque and silent manner in which she poured the drinks before leaving them.

‘Is something the matter with Rosa?’ asked Manfred.

‘She’s had better days,’ said Wakeley, and he told them what he’d learned from Rosa about Lillian.

‘She was screwing a fisherman!?’

‘And had been for a few months.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ mumbled Justin.

‘How did they meet?’ asked Manfred.

‘By chance, I don’t know, Rosa’s not sure, and it’s not important. This, on the other hand, is—’ Wakeley slid the file across the table. ‘It’s his military record. I had it flown up from Washington. You were right about the tattoo—the red arrowhead.’

Manfred turned to the first page. ‘First Special Service Force? I’ve never heard of them.’

‘Sounds like some kind of support unit,’ said Justin.

‘That was the idea. Unfortunately, they were anything but that. It was a joint US-Canadian commando outfit. They recruited outdoorsmen—hunters, trappers, loggers, quarrymen—men already accustomed to harsh weather, a hard life. Read it.’

Manfred placed the file on the table and they perused it, side by side. After a couple of pages Justin muttered, ‘Jesus Christ, how many silver stars does a man need?’

‘There’s also a Distinguished Service Cross in there.’

‘I think we get the picture,’ said Manfred.

‘Only part of it. That was the bad news.’ Wakeley handed over the other file.

‘And this is good?’

‘It helps us, yes, quite a bit.’

‘Skip the dramatics, Richard,’ said Justin irritably. ‘Just tell us.’

‘He cracked up in southern France. Badly. He spent the last year of the war in a psychiatric hospital in England.’

‘That’s the good news?’ asked Justin. ‘We’re not just dealing with a war hero, we’re dealing with a deranged war hero!?’

‘He’s unreliable,’ said Manfred, catching on. ‘It discredits anything he says.’

‘Exactly,’ said Wakeley. ‘The question then becomes: what does he know? I think we can safely say he didn’t witness the accident, so we have to assume he heard about it from Lillian.’

‘It’s hearsay.’

‘Right. The word of a dead woman, relayed via her mentally unstable lover, against ours, the three of us. It would never stand up.’

‘But it might create a scandal,’ offered Manfred. ‘The sort of talk we’d never recover from.’

‘We’d gag him as soon as he went to the police with it. Which begs the question: why hasn’t he, gone to the police, I mean?’

‘Because he knows he doesn’t have enough.’

‘And he’ll never get it, as long as we all keep our heads.’

Justin unwound his long legs from beneath the chair and leaned forward, pensive.

‘Justin…?’ said Wakeley.

‘Huh?’

‘Is something bothering you?’

‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘Tell us anyway.’

‘The day of Lilly’s funeral, just after she was buried, this policeman approached me. He asked a bunch of questions about her.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Small…nondescript,’ shrugged Justin.

‘Deputy Chief Hollis.’

‘Yes, that was his name.’

‘What kind of questions?’ asked Wakeley.

‘I don’t know…my relationship with her. He seemed to know we’d been engaged. I really can’t remember, I was pretty upset at the time.’

‘Try and remember.’

Wakeley could feel Manfred tensing beside him and he wished he was alone with Justin right now.

‘He wanted to know how she was, the last time I saw her.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Well, not the truth,’ snorted Justin, ‘if that’s what you’re worried about.’

He had told
them
the truth, by phone, within a few hours of that walk on the beach with her. He had described Lillian’s worrying appeal to his conscience, the extent of her own crushing guilt, which seemed to have grown since her move out to East Hampton. He had told them, and they had told him not to worry, they would talk to her, make her see sense. But she hadn’t, she had stood her ground.

‘Why the hell didn’t you say something about this before!?’ snapped Manfred.

Justin was clearly taken aback by the vehemence of the question. ‘What…?’

‘Manfred…’ said Wakeley, trying to silence him with a look.

‘You should have told us before,’ insisted Manfred.

‘He was just a policeman doing his job, asking questions,’ said Justin defensively. ‘Anyway, her death’s got nothing to do with this.’

And then the unthinkable dawned across his face.

‘It doesn’t, does it?’

‘Of course not,’ said Wakeley, stepping in.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

It was an admirable recovery on Manfred’s part, just the right note of dismissive indignation.

‘But we can’t afford to take any chances. Everything has to go through Richard, we agreed that—everything.’

Dinner was a muted affair. Justin declined the offer of a nightcap and they accompanied him to his car. As he pulled away into the night, Manfred turned to Wakeley.

‘I’m sorry, Richard, I messed up.’

‘You’re inclined to speak before you think. It’s your one fault.’

‘He knows, doesn’t he?’

‘He can’t afford to.’

‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘Yes, it is.’

Manfred offered him a cigarette and lit it for him.

‘The policeman, Hollis, he’s no fool. He has shrewd eyes.’

‘Christ, it’s unraveling, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s not. These things are rarely perfect, it’s all about evidence, a game of percentages. If Hollis had anything concrete we’d know it by now.’ Wakeley paused. ‘It’s Labarde who concerns me. We haven’t heard the last of him.’

‘You think?’

‘They were close, Manfred.’

‘You said they only knew each other a few months.’

‘She was in love with him.’

Manfred snorted.

‘You don’t want to believe it, I understand. But why would she lie to Rosa about something like that?’

‘Rosa said that?’

Wakeley nodded.

Manfred shook his head in disbelief. ‘What did she think, that we’d welcome him into the fold?’ He flicked his cigarette away in anger. ‘A fucking fisherman!?’

‘Our opponent. And you never underestimate an opponent. We have to assume he’s not going away.’

‘That’s very comforting, Richard.’

‘It’s no time for sarcasm.’

‘You know what bothers me? What bothers me is that we didn’t know about him in the first place. Why is that, Richard? Why wasn’t that in the fucking plan?’

‘It was an oversight. It wasn’t dealt with then, we’re dealing with it now. We just have to stay calm.’

Manfred laughed, amused by the notion. ‘Calm? You have any idea what’s at stake here?’

‘You know I do.’

‘Everything. I mean
everything.
And you’re telling me to stay calm?’

‘Don’t forget,’ said Wakeley, ‘I wasn’t the one driving the car that night.’

Manfred’s eyes locked on to him, but the anger went out of them. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘This is what he wants, to rattle us. Try to think of it as a test. For the future. You’ll learn from it, be stronger for it.’ He rested a comforting hand on Manfred’s shoulder. ‘We’ll get through this, you have my word.’

‘It’s the waiting, I don’t think I can stand the waiting.’

‘Who said anything about waiting? There are times when it’s right to throw the first punch.’

They went indoors and Wakeley spelled out his stratagem.

‘It’s a high-stakes game you’re proposing,’ said Manfred.

‘But the right one.’

Manfred thought on it. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But I want your friend brought back in, just in case.’

‘He’s not my friend,’ said Wakeley. ‘I don’t even know who he is.’

‘But you know where to find him, right?’

Wakeley nodded.

Hollis had always loved the night shift. Even as a patrolman he’d never complained, often trading his days for others’ nights. He preferred the stillness of the sleeping city, the company of the midnight folk—the tramps picking over the detritus of the day, hurrying to beat the street-sweepers and the garbage men, heaping their treasures high upon creaky handcarts; the park-bench philosophers and the outright crazies with their uncommon wisdoms; the cabbies gathered at the taxi ranks, smoking and joking, blue banter swathed in blue smoke.

Then there were the sounds, not smothered by the deafening white noise of the daylight hours—the distant peal of an ambulance, the snatches of music as customers rolled out of basement jazz clubs, the rumble of the early milk wagons. The night made you aware, it allowed you to pick up the trails of other people’s lives.

A Monday night in East Hampton was a very different affair. It was as if word of an approaching plague had reached the community and everyone had left in haste, a few forgetting to extinguish their porch lights before fleeing.

Hollis set himself the challenge of finding any form of life. He was rewarded a few minutes later by the twin beacons of a cat casting a derisory glance in his direction as it loped across Dunemere Lane in front of the patrol car.

At the junction with Egypt Lane, the radio squawked into life.
It was young Stringer—always so earnest—holding the fort back at headquarters.

‘Calling Deputy Chief Hollis, calling Deputy Chief Hollis. Over.’

‘Calm down, Stringer. What is it?’

‘An intruder, sir, I just got a call. They heard noises. Over.’

‘You want to tell me where?’

‘Oh, yes…62 Three Mile Harbor Road. Over.’

‘I’m on it.’

‘Do you want assistance? Over.’

‘I can handle it.’

He parked the car some distance down from the house, approaching on foot. There were no lights burning, and he made his way round to the back door. It wasn’t locked. He entered. A tap dripped in the kitchen sink. It was the only sound.

He stepped lightly across the wooden floor, creeping along the corridor, glancing into the living room. It was deserted. A loose board creaked beneath his feet as he climbed the stairs.

The door at the far end of the landing was ajar. He poked his head into the room before stealing inside.

Taking hold of the cotton sheet, he drew it slowly off the bed, inch by inch. She was lying face down, one leg cocked.

His fingertips traced a lazy course from her ankle, up her calf, the back of her leg, gently delving into the warm fork of her thighs.

She stirred, moving her leg slightly to allow his fingers better access. He began unbuttoning his jacket with his free hand.

‘No, don’t take your uniform off,’ she said quietly.

He woke late, his nose searching for the smell of brewing coffee. There was none. He was at home, and had been since four o’clock that morning. He glanced at his uniform discarded on the chair, smiled at the memory of the fleeting encounter with Mary, then swung his legs out of bed, moving with purpose.

He began by tossing the clothes Lydia had left behind into a pile in the middle of the room, hangers and all. Objects followed, the
endless knick-knacks she’d accumulated over the years—a family of clay mice with leather tails, a wire figure of a clown, a stuffed redheaded woodpecker clinging to a piece of bark, and worse, far worse. Out of guilt, she’d left him the lion’s share of these, unaware that he’d only ever cooed over them out of politeness to her. They all ended up on the pile. He moved on, working his way through the other rooms, heaping up the litter of their marriage. He was ruthless in his selection. Anything that wasn’t essential to his survival or comfort was tossed. He felt no bitterness, rather a lightness of head.

When he was done, he bundled the piles into his car and drove to the town dump. It occurred to him that much of what he was throwing out might be of interest to the ladies in charge of the rummage booth at the LVIS summer fair, but he dismissed the idea. He didn’t relish the prospect of Mary hearing about the ceremonial purging; she might take it the wrong way.

What
was
the wrong way? Or the right way, for that matter? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that, for reasons he’d yet to fathom, she seemed very keen on him. It was all a little overwhelming, to say nothing of exhausting.

Was it normal to want to make love so frequently? He had assumed that the women who populated the pulp novels that used to make the rounds of the detective division were creatures of fiction, with their steamy glances and insatiable appetites.

The last few days had forced him to reconsider that position. Twice she had spurred him on in the scallop shack behind Joe’s house, the mosquitoes feasting merrily on his back. Then in the depths of the night she had stirred him awake with her mouth, insisting that he just lie there this time, inert on his back, while she straddled him. She wasn’t wholly to blame. In the morning, he’d been the instigator as they were dressing for breakfast.

Joe had prepared a small feast to set them up for the return journey, and when he shuffled off to church in his Sunday best, they too went on their way, following the boggy, twisting shoreline of Accabonac Harbor, emerging on to the shimmering sweep of Gardiner’s Bay.

They headed south along the beach, beneath the bluffs, chatting idly as they strolled barefoot across the sand. It was a windless day, and they screwed up their eyes against the sun glancing off the mirrored surface of the bay. At first he resisted the sensation, wary and mistrustful, but he soon gave in to it, recognizing it for what it was: contentment, the simple yet complete pleasure of just being with Mary.

They cut inland, working their way up on to Stony Hill, just north of Amagansett. The narrow trail rose and fell, snaking through the dense woods. It was a rare glimpse of the ancient Appalachian forest that had once blanketed much of the East End, Mary explained. He knew he was meant to appreciate this virgin patch of untamed nature, but he didn’t; it unsettled him, with its gloomy aspects, its rustlings of unseen creatures, and its chorus of amplified birdsong echoing off the canopy of leaves. He was relieved when they finally emerged once more into the sunlight, stepping out through the open pastures that lay to the west, and that led them eventually to the post-and-rail fence of Mary’s home pasture.

They shared a bath then ate a late lunch, which left Hollis plenty of time to return home and get ready for his first of two night shifts. The next day, he had dropped by the LVIS offices on some false pretext to do with the summer fair. With five days to go till the big event, the place was in the grip of a barely contained panic, but Mary still found time to whisper what she intended to do to him the following evening.

She hadn’t waited, summoning him to her house that same night with the call to police headquarters, and he had gone, unquestioningly. And now he was standing at the town dump, hurling away the last tangible remnants of his marriage, wondering what in the hell he was getting himself into: a divorced woman with a difficult son, a violent goose and an unnatural attachment to a place he’d had every intention of leaving before the summer was out.

His confusion hadn’t faded by the time he showed up for work at midday, but it was quickly replaced by another.

Tuesday was Milligan’s day off, the day he set aside for fishing
with his cronies, when they wouldn’t have to do battle with the crush of weekend anglers for the best casting spots out at the Point. Yet there the Chief was, sitting at his desk, going over some files. The squad room was deserted.

‘You got a moment?’ called Milligan, far too reasonably. Hollis entered the office.

‘Take a seat.’

‘Not fishing today, Chief?’

‘Doesn’t look that way, does it?’ He nodded at the chair, and Hollis sat himself down. ‘You’ve been asking questions about Lillian Wallace.’

It was bad, worse than he thought.

‘I spoke to the maid, yes.’ Did Milligan also know about his conversation with Justin Penrose?

‘Rosa Cossedu,’ said Milligan, reading off a name from the notes in front of him.

‘Yes. Routine stuff.’

‘Anyone else?’

Shit, thought Hollis, he knows.

‘Her ex-fiancé. Julian…something.’

‘Penrose. And it’s Justin.’

‘Right.’

Milligan had bought it. If Hollis couldn’t even recall the name, then that conversation must also have been routine.

‘And the purpose of these discussions?’

‘I was just trying to establish Miss Wallace’s state of mind, eliminate the possibility of suicide.’

‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ said Milligan, ‘but hasn’t the coroner’s inquest already returned its verdict?’

‘Yes.’

‘Accidental drowning.’

‘Like I say, sir, it was just routine.’

‘By the book.’

‘Right.’

‘Well, sometimes you got to put that book of yours aside.’ Milligan was quite calm, his self-importance leaving no place for
anger. ‘You missed something, Hollis. Labarde was seeing Lillian

Wallace.’

‘Seeing…?’

‘Seeing. Screwing. The maid knew all along.’

‘I don’t understand.’

But he did, he just needed time to assimilate the news. It explained Rosa’s nervousness when he’d pushed her on the matter of her mistress’s bed, which hadn’t been slept in. He had read her right, she’d been holding out on him, but this realization gave him little satisfaction, for he’d utterly failed to grasp the true nature of the Basque’s involvement.

‘What’s there to understand?’ asked Milligan.

What had he thought, that the big fisherman was playing at the amateur sleuth, doing his bit for local law enforcement? Christ, had he grown so blind in the last year?

‘Hollis?’

‘Is it relevant? I mean…to the question of her death?’

‘It’s relevant, Hollis, to the fact that Labarde has been harassing the Wallaces. The girl’s brother, Manfred, he was round here earlier raising a stink.’

‘Harassing?’

‘Hartwell’s bringing him in.’

‘Bringing him in?’

‘What is it with the goddamn echo in here?’ said Milligan. ‘Yes, bringing him in. The Wallaces are worried. So would you be if you’d read these.’

He tossed a couple of files across the desk.

‘They’re Labarde’s military records. The guy’s a fucking fruitcake.’

Hollis read the files in the privacy of his office. He felt bad, soiled. No one had the right to peer into the depths of a man’s soul uninvited.

The Basque clearly felt the same way. The reports by the English psychiatrist were peppered with references to the patient’s stubborn resistance to discussion. The doctor’s building frustration leapt off the page. At least he seemed to care. There were several
mentions in the handwritten notes of the brother, Antton, and his death some years before the war; but again, it was a line of discussion Labarde had refused to co-operate with.

Statements by fellow soldiers pointed to a marked deterioration in his state of mind following the First Special Service Force’s assignment to southern France. There was a detailed account of an assault by the 2nd Regiment on a German position on the Île du Levant, wherever that was. Ironically, in the light of what happened next, Labarde’s growing recklessness and disregard for his own life had only won him more accolades.

Labarde claimed to recall nothing of the incident near the Italian border that had ended his war and almost his life, but there were enough other testimonials to piece together the sequence of events. Labarde had been out scouting German positions in the mountains just back from the coast when some kind of fire-fight had erupted and he’d called in an artillery barrage. When the rest of his squad arrived on the scene, they found him badly wounded by shrapnel, barely alive. The Germans were all dead—from gunshot wounds. It was possible that other Germans had retreated before the barrage hit, but there was a chilling statement from a lieutenant that suggested otherwise. He had been watching from across the valley through his field glasses, and he described how he’d seen Labarde climb to the top of a large rock on the spur and just stand there in the open, facing the incoming shells. Everything pointed to Labarde killing the Germans then calling in the barrage—right on top of himself.

Hollis closed the files and lit a cigarette. He had heard of men losing it in combat—shell-shock, battle fatigue—catchphrases known to all. But this seemed different, more like a gradual heaping up of war, pressing down on a man, buckling him slowly. He reached for parallels in his own life, but there were none. What had he ever really seen that came close, what had he ever really done?

It was a sobering realization. He tamped out his cigarette and stared at the wall clock, the second hand ticking interminably by, hammering out the inescapable truth: he had lost the initiative, events had outrun him in the last few days while he’d been dallying
around with Mary, at the mercy of his own lust like some overheated schoolboy.

Voices in the squad room brought him round. He entered as Chief Milligan was ushering the Basque into his office. Hollis caught the Basque’s eye, but there was no sign of recognition.

‘What’s going on, Tom?’ asked Bob Hartwell.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said, entering Milligan’s office.

His earlier display of ignorance, stupidity even, had earned him the right to watch the great man at work.

Milligan went in hard, way too hard. There was no teasing, no coaxing, no insinuation designed to unsettle; he just slapped it on the table like a side of meat.

‘I’m not sure I know what you’re saying,’ was the Basque’s response.

‘I’m not saying anything, I’m asking.’

‘You mean, why did I keep quiet about my involvement with Lillian Wallace?’

‘What else do you think I mean?’

‘Probably the same reason she didn’t mention it to anyone.’

‘But she did—to the maid.’

‘They were very close,’ said the Basque.

Hollis was beginning to understand how the English psychiatrist must have felt.

‘I’m waiting for your answer,’ said Milligan.