Lying Dead (27 page)

    ‘Oh.’ Fleming stopped short. The conversation had been an indulgence, a rare chance to talk shop with someone who knew all the problems but wasn’t involved in her own professional life. But her luxurious bath – room service . . . ‘I wouldn’t want you to feel you had to entertain me. Don’t you have someone at home who’ll be expecting you?’

    His face darkened. ‘Not recently. And it was a mutual decision to call it a day, so there’s no need to go saying, “Oh, I’m sorry!” ’

    It was unnecessarily savage, and she had no intention of being bounced into discussion of his personal life. ‘It’s all right,’ Fleming said sweetly, ‘I wouldn’t have meant it, except in the most conventional and indifferent way.’

    Carter blinked, and then the corners of his mouth twitched. ‘You don’t pull your punches, do you?’

    ‘Not as a general rule. It only means having to hit harder later. Where’s this restaurant, then?’

Jenna Murdoch looked anxiously at the time. That was the Channel 4 news coming on, and she’d told Mirren to be back at half-past six. She was normally fairly relaxed about Mirren’s time-keeping, but with all that was going on at the moment she was on edge, and when the phone rang she answered it with uncharacteristic nervousness – was Mirren all right?

    But it was her husband’s voice she heard, telling her he wouldn’t be in for supper. He had spoken civilly enough; her sharp reply, ‘Oh, had a better offer then, have you?’ was needlessly provocative. There was a short pause, then, ‘Just letting you know,’ he said, and put down the phone.

    Taking her anxiety out on Niall wasn’t exactly going to improve their relationship, she acknowledged wryly, but she was past caring. What was the point? Sooner rather than later, she was going to have to deal with the whole sorry mess.

    It was with some relief that, after quarter of an hour of watching a news story of political chicanery without taking in a word of it, she saw Mirren appear unhurriedly up the path, pausing to talk to the chained-up dog on the way. She turned off the set.

   
Don’t alienate your daughter the way you have your husband
, an inner voice cautioned, and when the child came into the room she said lightly, ‘You’re very late, Mirren. What have you been doing?’

    Mirren seemed surprised as she looked at the clock. ‘Sorry, Mum.’ She sat down at the table.

    ‘What were you doing?’ Jenna persisted.

    ‘Oh, just kind of walking round,’ she said. ‘I didn’t notice the time. Is it pizza? Oh good.’

    Admitting defeat, Jenna put the pizza into the microwave and removed the place she had set for Niall. ‘Your father won’t be in for supper this evening,’ she said, but her daughter didn’t reply. Staring blankly out of the window, she seemed lost in thought.

Laura Harvey was on the phone to a friend at a little after seven o’clock when there was a knock on the door and the collie started to bark.

    ‘All right, Daisy, that’s enough. Someone at the door, Maggie – I’ll call you back.’

    Jon Kingsley stood on the doorstep. ‘Sorry – is this a bad time?’ he asked, as the dog sniffed round his feet.

    ‘No, not at all. Come on in.’ Laura stood aside to let him pass. ‘This is a surprise! I thought that with all that’s going on you wouldn’t have seen daylight for a week.’

    ‘
Was
going on,’ he corrected her. ‘All that
was
going on. We’ve got our man under lock and key.’

    ‘That was quick! I did think you were looking very pleased with yourself. Coffee? Or would you like a drink?’

    ‘Better be coffee. I’ve got the car and with the red-hot policing about here, you can’t be too careful.’

    Laura laughed. There was something very engaging about such childish strutting. ‘Shall we have “Show and Tell” while I make your coffee?’ she teased.

    The kitchen was very tiny. With Daisy, as always, making herself Laura’s shadow, there was room only for Jon to stand in the doorway.

    ‘Actually, I’ll have to go back in shortly. There’s quite a bit of paperwork to process, but I needed a break and decided to pop in to see you.

    ‘It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. We’ve got solid evidence – better not say what it is, but it nails him good. And he didn’t quite confess, but he had to admit to everything short of the killing. Greg Allan – my sergeant – is the Super’s blue-eyed boy, and I got a great big pat on the back as well. Should be a step towards my stripe!

    ‘Oh, Greg’s a buffoon, of course – brain of a backward goldfish – but at least he doesn’t muck about like some people.’

    Laura, taking the lid off a tin and peering doubtfully at the shortbread inside, frowned. Slagging off your colleagues like that wasn’t attractive. And it suggested, too, some sort of insecurity, as if the only way you could shine was by denigrating someone else. She was beginning to understand Tam’s attitude to Jon.

    She handed him a mug. ‘Come on through. I can’t vouch for the shortbread – it’s a bit elderly, I think.’

    They sat down and Daisy, bribed with a small piece, lay down at her mistress’s feet.

    ‘So do I take it this isn’t a consultation?’ Laura asked. ‘Since you’ve got your man?’

    He wisely refused the shortbread. ‘I came for the pleasure of your company, of course – what else? But you were very kind to agree when I asked you. I pride myself on taking an in-depth view of the cases I’m involved in, though we’re not going to have to do anything very subtle here. It’s the sort of motive even a jury can’t fail to understand – she did the dirty on him, he killed her when he got the chance.’

    ‘Why did she give him the chance, though?’ Laura wondered. ‘The report in the paper today said she’d changed her name and gone to live in Manchester, which would suggest she’d had a guilty conscience and was avoiding him.’

    ‘We did talk about that. But why she came back – who knows? Any ideas to put forward? It’s a question someone’s going to ask, isn’t it?’

    Whatever he might say, he was pumping her. But she was prepared to indulge him that far. ‘It would depend on what sort of person she was. She might have wanted to make her peace with him – guilty conscience. Or she might just have got tired of the inconvenience of living under an assumed name. Or didn’t like Manchester and wanted to come back.’

    ‘Mmm. More likely the second, I’d guess. But thanks, anyway. Her motive isn’t really our business, but it just could be helpful to be able to offer some sort of rationale.

    ‘The big question, of course, is what Big Marge is going to say. She won’t like it; she’s been off in Manchester and she’s going to come back and find we’ve got it all tied up and there’s nothing for her to do. She’s completely out of the loop, so how’s she going to react? Is she going to try to rubbish what we’ve done? You’re the psychologist, you know her – tell me that!’

    Was this what it was all about? Laura looked at him with profound distaste. ‘I think you’re forgetting that Marjory is my friend. Not just that – I owe her my life. If you’re playing some sort of dirty little game to undermine her position, I want nothing to do with it. Or you.’ She stood up. Daisy, immediately alert to her mistress’s tone, began to growl.

    The expression of dismay on his face was almost comical. ‘Laura, you’ve got it wrong! I didn’t mean – it’s just—’

    In steely silence, she moved towards the door.

    ‘Laura,’ he tried again, ‘I’m an idiot. Sorry. We had something going here – I don’t want it to end like this. Please sit down again and let me apologize – explain  . . .’

    When she still said nothing, Jon smiled ruefully. ‘They say you shouldn’t do that, don’t they? “Never apologize, never explain” – it’s just supposed to make matters worse. But in this case, they seem to be about as bad as they can be. Please sit down.’

    She hesitated, then, as he said, ‘Please?’ again, sat down on the edge of her chair, Daisy at her feet eyeing Jon watchfully.

    ‘I know, I know, I’m a young man in a hurry.’ He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and hands together as if in prayer. ‘You’re a psychologist; perhaps you’ll understand.

    ‘My father was a very successful businessman and then one day everything went pear-shaped and he lost the lot. He was a man who’d told a hundred people what to do, and suddenly he was – nothing.

    ‘So he needs me to be successful – for him, really, more than for me. And nothing I’ve done so far has been good enough. So I suppose I’m inclined to lose sight of everything except the need to prove to him what I’m made of.’

    Interested against her will, Laura said, quite gently, ‘You do realize, don’t you, that whatever you do might not be good enough?’

    ‘Of course. Even policemen have to know some psychology. But you see, if I’m a high flier, if I can make rank ahead of everyone else, I can look him in the eye and say, “I don’t care what you think, Dad, I’m a success and I have the stripes to prove it.”’

    She doubted that. Reason didn’t come into this; you couldn’t argue it away. She said only, ‘If you push too hard, and you try to do it by cutting other people down, it often backfires.’

    ‘Like it just did. Sorry.’ Jon looked down at his hands. ‘I enjoy the job anyway – you know that? It’s a great job, and part of the reason I want to get further up the ladder is because I know I’m good at it.’

    He looked up, then grinned. ‘And the money’s a lot better, too.’

    She found herself smiling back. Oh, he had charm; there was no doubt about that. ‘All right, you’ve made your point. But lay off Marjory, OK?’ She got up again and this time he did too.

    ‘I promise. But I haven’t blown it completely with you?’

    ‘Not completely, no.’

    But after he had left, she stood staring into space, thinking over what he had said. Daisy, unsettled by the tension there had been in the atmosphere, nudged her with her nose; she patted the dog absent-mindedly and went to sit down again.

    Jon had promised. Did she believe him? She wasn’t sure that it was even a promise he was able to keep. It was a textbook scenario – and curiously enough, one she had seen affecting Marjory as well. There could be breakers ahead.

It was a small Indian restaurant in a back street. They knew Chris Carter there, and Marjory felt embarrassed by the proprietor’s attentions.

    ‘I feel you should tell him that this is a purely professional relationship,’ Marjory said as the man, beaming, led them to their table.

    ‘Not a chance,’ Chris said. ‘You’re doing wonders for my cred. I’ve eaten here alone too often recently. What about you? Significant other?’

    It was strange to think of Bill that way. She told him, briefly, about the farm and her family.

    He said only, ‘Lucky you. Now, there’s no menu here. They work out what you’d like, then bring it. Trust me – you’ll love it.’ Then he went back to talking about the job which possessed both of them, quite possibly to an unhealthy extent.

    ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘what other job is there that’s so important? Being a doctor, OK. But short of that, you’re dealing with the most vital thing in anyone’s life – freedom.’

    ‘And justice,’ Marjory said eagerly. ‘How would you have coped with the death penalty – if someone would actually die as a result of your investigation, whether you were right or wrong?’

    They were off. The food, delicious, unobtrusive, appeared and was removed as they talked on. They talked about their cases: his, where there were firearms and multiple deaths, hers where an occasional death sent a whole community into shock.

    ‘The stakes are probably almost higher, in a way,’ Chris said thoughtfully. ‘A gang death is a gang death, but they know the risks – they accept them at the initiation ceremonies. Mostly it doesn’t involve anybody else unless they’re caught in the crossfire, so ordinary folk will just shrug. Within a community  . . .’

    ‘You’re going to have to deal with another death tomorrow. With us, it’ll all settle down again. We’d a quiet spell before this when quite honestly, apart from the usual trivial stuff, it was deathly boring. I thought of sending Tam out to mug someone, just for the sake of variety.’

    ‘Now, why don’t I find it as hard as I should to picture your sergeant in that role?’

    Marjory smiled. ‘I know. But he’s invaluable. He’s seen the other side, and decided against it. Or at least, his wife has seen to it that he decided. If I were asked who should run the penal system, I’d nominate Bunty.’

    The supply of food had stopped. There were several bottles of Kingfisher beer on the table, and they were all empty. ‘So,’ Chris said, ‘back to the farm tomorrow?’

    ‘Oh God, what time is it?’ Stricken, Marjory looked at her watch. ‘Eleven – too late to phone Bill!’

    ‘He’ll be in bed already?’

    ‘You don’t stay up late, if you’re up at half-past five – probably nearer five, as the light gets better. I hate going to bed without saying goodnight.’

    Chris looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, ‘It sounds idyllically happy. I envy you.’

    ‘Yes,’ she agreed, and then for no reason she could think of, apart from the number of empty bottles on the table, she started talking to him about the serpent in her Eden, the woman who had spat in her face and was now her nearest neighbour.