Original Sin (34 page)

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own fame, his own heroism, his own innocence, became repugnant to him.

He had needed to get away from France and had come to London. His grandmother had been English. He spoke the language faultlessly and was familiar with the peculiarities of English customs, all of which helped to soothe his self-imposed banishment. But he hadn't come to England out of any special affection for the country or its people. The countryside was beautiful, but then he had had France. It had been necessary to leave and England was the obvious choice. It was in London at a party - he couldn't now remember which or where - that he had been introduced to Henry Peverell's cousin Margaret. She was pretty, sensitive and appealingly childlike, and had fallen romantically in love with him, in love with his heroism, with his nationality, even with his accent. He had found her uncritical adulation flattering, and it was difficult not to respond with at least affection and a protective warmth for what he saw as her vulner-ability. But he had never loved her. He had only loved one human being. With Chantal had died his capacity for any feeling warmer than affection.

But he had married her, taken her for four years to Toronto, and when that self-imposed banishment grew irksome they had returned to London, now with two babies. At Henry's invitation he had joined the Peverell Press, invested his considerable capital in the firm, taken his shares and spent the rest of his working life in that extravagant folly on a northern alien river. He supposed that he had been reasonably content. He knew people thought him rather dull; that didn't surprise him, he bored himself. The marriage had endured. He had made his wife Margaret Peverell as happy as she was capable of being. He suspected that the Peverell women weren't capable of much happiness. She had desperately wanted children and he had dutifully provided her with the son and daughter for which she had hoped. That was how, then and now, he thought of parenthood; the giving of something necessary for his wife's happiness if not for his own and for which, having provided it as he might a ring, a necklace or a new car, he need take no further responsibility since responsibility was handed over with the gift.

And now Gerard was dead and this unknown policeman was coming to tell him that his son had been murdered.

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37

Kate and Daniel's appointment to see Rupert Farlow had been fixed for ten o'clock. They knew it would be almost impossible to park in Hillgate Village so left the car at Notting Hill Gate Police Station and walked up the gentle hill under the high limes of Holland Park Avenue. Kate thought how strange it was to be back so soon in this familiar part of London. She had left her flat only three days earlier but it seemed that she had moved away from the area in imagination as well as in fact and that now, coming up to Notting Hill Gate, she saw the raucous urban conglomeration through the eyes of a stranger. But nothing, of course, had changed; the discordant undistinguished 93os architecture, the plethora of street signs, the ra'dings which made her feel like a herded animal, the long concrete flower beds with their straggling and dust-grimed evergreens, the shop fronts spilling their names in rivers of garish light red, green and yellow, the ceaseless grind of the traffic. There was even the same beggar outside the supermarket with his large Alsatian slumped on a rug at his feet, murmuring to passers-by his appeal for change to buy a sandwich. Behind this busyness lay Hillgate Village in its stuccoed multicoloured calm. As they passed the beggar and stood waiting to cross at the traffic lights, Daniel said: 'We've got a few like that where I live. I'd be tempted to pop into the supermarket and buy him a sandwich if I wasn't afraid of provoking a breach of the peace and if he and the dog didn't already look over-fed. Do you ever give?' 'Not to his kind, and not often. Sometimes. I disapprove of myself but I do it. Never more than a quid.' 'To be spent on drink and drugs.' 'A gift should be unconditional. Even a quid. Even to a beggar. And OK, I do know that it's conniving at an offence.' They had crossed the road at the traffic lights when abruptly he spoke again. 'I ought to go to my cousin's bar mitzvah next Saturday.' 'Then go, that is if it's important.'

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'AD won't welcome an application for leave. You know how he is once we're on a case.'

'It doesn't take all day, does it? Ask him. He was very decent when Robbins wanted that day off after his uncle died.'

'That was for a Christian funeral not a Jewish bar mitzvah.'

'What other kind of bar mitzvah is there? And don't be unfair. He isn't like that and you know it. Like I said, if it's important ask, if it isn't don't.'

'Important to whom?'

'How do I know? To the boy I suppose.'

'I hardly know him. I doubt whether he'll care much either way. But we're a small family, he's only got the two cousins. I suppose he'd like me to be there. My aunt would probably prefer me not to be. That way she'll be given another grievance against my mother.'

'You can hardly expect AD to decide whether pleasing your nephew is more important than disobliging your aunt. If it's important to you then go. Why make such a big thing about it?'

He didn't reply, and as they made their way up Hillgate Street she thought, perhaps it's because, for him, it is a big thing. Thinking back on it, the brief conversation surprised her. This was the first time he had even tentatively opened the door to his private life. And she had thought that, like her, he guarded with almost obsessive watchfulness that essentially inviolate portal. In the three months since he had joined the squad they had never spoken of his Jewishness, nor indeed of much else except work. Was he genuinely seeking advice or using her to clear his thoughts? If he needed advice it was surprising that he sought it from her. She had from the first been aware of a defensive-ness in him which if not tactfully handled could become tricky, and she slightly resented the need for tact in a professional relationship. Police work was stressful enough without the need to propitiate or accommodate a colleague. But she liked him or, it might be truer to say, was beginning to like him without being sure why. He was sturdily built, hardly taller than she, strong featured, fair haired and with slate-grey eyes which shone like polished pebbles. When he was angry they could darken almost to black. She recognized both his intelligence and an ambition which mirrored her own. And at least he had no hang-up about working with a woman senior to himself or, if he had, was more skilful than most of his colleagues at concealing it. She told herself, too, that she was beginning to find him sexually

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attractive as if this formal and regular recognition of the fact could guard her against the follies of propinquity. She had seen too many colleagues make a mess of their private and professional'lives to risk that kind of involvement, always so much easier to begin than to end.

She said, wanting to match his confidence and fearing that she had been too dismissive: 'There were a dozen different religions among the children at Ancroft Comprehensive. We seemed always to be celebrating some kind of feast or ceremony. Usually it required making a noise and dressing up. The official line was that all religions were equally important. I must say that the result was to leave me with the conviction that they were equally unimportant. I suppose if you don't teach religion with conviction it becomes just one more boring subject. Perhaps I'm a natural pagan. I don't go in for all this emphasis on sin, suffering and judgement. If I had a God I'd like Him to be intelligent, cheerful and amusing.'

He said: 'I doubt whether you'd find him much of a comfort when they herded you into the gas chambers. You might prefer a god of vengeance. This is the street isn't it?'

She wondered if he had wearied of the subject or was warning her off his private ground. She said: 'Yes. It looks as if the high numbers are at the other end.'

There was an entryphone at the left of the door. Kate pressed the bell and when a masculine voice responded said: 'This is Inspector Miskin and Inspector Aaron. We've come to see Mr Farlow. He is expecting us.'

She listened for the buzz which would indicate that the door lock had been released, but instead the same voice said: 'I'll be down.'

The wait of a minute and a half seemed longer. Kate had looked at her watch a second time when the door was opened and they found themselves confronted by a stocky young man, barefoot and wearing tightly fitting trousers in a blue and white check and a white sweatshirt. His hair was cut in very short spikes giving the round head the look of a bristled brush. His nose was wide and chubby and the short round arms with their patina of brown hair looked as softly plump as a child's. Kate thought that he had the snug compactness of a toy bear, needing only a price tag dangling from the earring in his left ear to complete the illusion. But the pale blue eyes meeting hers were initially wary, then changed as she met them to frank antagon-ism, and when he spoke there was no welcome in his voice. Ignoring

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the proffered warrant card he said: 'You'd better come up.'

The narrow hall was very warm, the air permeated with an exotic smell, part floral part spicy, which Kate would have found agreeable if it had been less strong. They mounted the narrow stairs behind their guide and found themselves in a sitting-room which ran the whole length of the house. A curved archway showed where once there must have been the dividing wall. At the rear a small conservatory had been built out to overlook the garden. Kate, who thought that she had brought to an art the ability to take in details of her surroundings without betraying too obvious a curiosity, now noticed nothing but the man they had come to see. He was lying propped up on a single bed to the right of the conservatory and he was obviously dying. She had seen the extremity of emaciation often enough pictured on her television screen; viewing almost routinely in her sitting-room the dead eyes and shrivelled limbs of starvation. But now, encountering it for the first time, she wondered how any human being could be so diminished and still breathe, how the great eyes, which seemed to be floating free in their sockets, could hold her with such a look of intense, slightly ironic amusement. He was enveloped in a dressing-gown of scarlet silk but it could give no glow to the sickly yellow skin. There was a card table close to the head of the bed with a facing chair and two packs of cards ready on the green baize top. It looked as if Rupert Farlow and his companion were about to begin a game of canasta.

His voice was not strong but it did not waver; the essential self was still alive, still heard in its high clear tones. 'Forgive me if I don't get up. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I'm conserving my energies for ensuring that Ray doesn't get a sight of my cards. Do sit down if you can find a seat. Would you like a drink? I know you're not supposed to drink on duty but I insist on regarding this as a social call. Ray, where did you hide the bottle?'

The boy, seated at the card table, made no move. Kate said: 'We won't drink, thank you. And this shouldn't take long. It's about Thursday evening.'

'I thought it might be.'

'Mr de Witt says that he came straight home from the office and was here with you all the evening. Could you confirm that?'

'If that's what James told you then it's true. James never lies. That's one of the things about him that his friends find so trying.'

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'And is it true?' 'Naturally. Hasn't he said so?' 'What time did he arrive home?' qte usual time. About six-thirty, isn't it? He'll tell you. He has told you, surely.' Kate, who had pushed a heap of magazines to one side, had seated herself on a Victorian sofa opposite the bed. She said: 'How long have you lived here with Mr de Witt?' Rupert Farlow turned on her his immense, pain-filled eyes, moving his head slowly as if the weight of this denuded skull had become too great for his neck to bear. He said: 'Are you asking how long I've shared this house as opposed, shall we say, to sharing his life, sharing his bed?' 'Yes, that's what I'm asking.' 'Four months, two weeks, three days. He took me in from the hospice. I'm not sure why. Perhaps being with the dying turns him on. It does some people. There was no shortage of visitors at the, hospice, I assure you. We're the one charity they can always get volunteers for. Sex and death, a great turn-on. We weren't lovers, incidentally. He's in love with that boringly conventional woman, Frances Peverell. James is depressingly heterosexual. You needn't be frightened to shake his hand or even indulge in more intimate physical contact if you like to try your luck.' Daniel said: 'He arrived here from work at six-thirty. Did he go out later?' 'Not as far as I know. He went up to bed at about eleven and he was here when I woke at three-thirty and four-fifteen and five forty-five. I made a careful note of the hours. Oh, and he did various messy things for me at about seven o'clock in the morning. He certainly wouldn't have had time between these hours to get back to Innocent House and dispose of Gerard Etienne. But I may as well warn you that I'm not particularly reliable. I would say that anyway. It isn't exactly in my interest to have James carted off to prison, is it?' Daniel said: 'Nor in your interest to be an accessory to murder.' 'That isn't the worry. If you take James you may as well take me. I should be more of an inconvenience to the criminal justice system than you would be to me. That's the advantage of dying. It hasn't a lot to be said for it but it does put you beyond the power of the police. Still, I must try to be helpful, mustn't I? There is one piece of

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corroborative evidence. You rang and spoke to James, didn't you, Ray, at about seven-thirty?'

Ray had taken up a second pack of cards and was expertly shuffling them. 'eah, that's right, seven-thirty. Rang to enquire. He was here then.'

There you are then. Wasn't it clever of me to remember?'

Kate said impulsively: 'Are you - surely you must be - the Rupert

Farlow who wrote The Fruit Cage?'

'Have you read it?'

'A friend gave it to me last Christmas. He managed to find a hardback. Apparently they're rather sought after. He told me that the first edition was sold out and that they didn't reprint.'