Playing for the Ashes (23 page)

“All right. You’ll get it. Look, Fleming may have been screwing my wife, but he was a damn fine cricket player—the best batsman we’ve had in half a century. If I wanted to put an end to his affair with Gabriella, I would have killed her, not him. At least that way the bloody test matches wouldn’t have been affected. Besides I didn’t even know he was in Kent on Wednesday. How could I have known?”

“You could have had him followed.”

“What would be the point?”

“Revenge.”

“If I wanted him dead. But I didn’t.”

“And Gabriella?”

“What about Gabriella?”

“Did you want her dead?”

“Certainly. It would be far more cost-effective than having to divorce her. But I like to think I’m rather more civilised than the average husband whose wife betrays him.”

“You haven’t heard from her?” Lynley asked.

“From Gabriella? Not a word.”

“She isn’t here in the house?”

Patten looked genuinely surprised, eyebrows lifted. “Here? No.” Then he seemed to realise why the question had been asked. “Oh. That wasn’t Gabriella.”

“If you wouldn’t mind substantiating the fact.”

“If it’s necessary.”

“Thank you.”

Patten sauntered into the house. Havers slouched in her chair, watching him through narrowed eyes. “What a pig,” she muttered.

“You’ve got the Cherbourg information?”

“I’m still breathing, Inspector.”

“Sorry.” Lynley gave her the number plates of the Jaguar in the garage. “We’ll want Kent to check if there’s been a sighting of either the Jag or the Range Rover near the Springburns. The Renault as well. The one on the drive.”

She snorted. “You think he’d stoop to rattling round in that?”

“If he’d stoop to murder.”

One of the farthest french doors opened. Patten returned. He was accompanied by a girl, no more than twenty years old. She was wearing an oversize sweater and leggings. Her body moved sinuously as she crossed the
fla
gstones on slim bare feet. Patten put his hand on the back of her neck, just beneath her hair, which was blacker than seemed natural and cut in a short geometric style that made her eyes look large. He pulled her closer to him and, for a moment, he appeared to breathe in whatever scent was coming from her scalp.

“Jessica,” he said by way of introduction.

“Your daughter?” Havers asked blandly.

“Sergeant,” Lynley said.

The girl seemed to understand the intention behind the exchange. She slid her index finger through a belt loop of Patten’s jeans and said, “You coming up now, Hugh? It’s getting late.”

He ran his hand down her back, in very much the same way a man strokes a prize race horse. “A few minutes,” he said. And to Lynley, “Inspector?”

Lynley lifted his hand in wordless indication of the fact that he had no questions to put to the girl. He waited until she had returned to the house before saying, “Where might your wife be, Mr. Patten? She’s disappeared. As has Fleming’s car. Have you any idea where she may have headed?”

Patten began to recap the whisky bottles. He set them on a tray along with the glasses. “None whatsoever. Although wherever she is, I doubt she’s alone.”

“Like yourself,” Havers said,
fli
pping her notebook closed.

Patten regarded her. His face was untroubled. “Yes. In that respect Gabriella and I have always been remarkably similar.”

CHAPTER
6

L
ynley reached for the folder of information from Kent. He began to flip through the crime scene photographs, his eyebrows drawn together above his spectacles. Barbara watched him, wondering how he was managing to look so wide awake.

She herself was knackered. It was nearly one in the morning. She’d had three cups of coffee since their return to New Scotland Yard, and despite the caffeine—or perhaps because of it—her brain was doing
fli
p
flo
ps but her body had decided to cash in its chips. She wanted to put her head on Lynley’s desk and snore, but instead she got to her feet, stretched, and walked to the window. No one was on the street below them. Above them, the sky was soot grey, rendered incapable of ever achieving true darkness because of the teeming megalopolis beneath it.

She pulled thoughtfully on her lower lip as she studied the view. “Let’s suppose Patten did it,” she said. Lynley made no reply. He set the photographs aside. He read part of Inspector Ardery’s report and raised his head. His expression became thoughtful. “He’s got motive enough,” Barbara continued. “If he rubs out Fleming, he’s got his revenge on the bloke that was rolling in Gabriella’s knickers.”

Lynley bracketed off a paragraph. Then a second one. One in the morning, Barbara thought with disgust, and he was still going strong.

“Well?” she asked him.

“May I see your notes?”

She returned to her chair, dug her notebook from her shoulder bag, handed it over. As she walked back to the window, Lynley ran his finger along the first and second pages of their interview with Mrs. Whitelaw. He read something on the third, something else on the fourth. He turned another page and twirled his pencil against it.

“He told us he draws the line at infidelity,” Barbara said. “Maybe his line is murder.”

Lynley looked in her direction. “Don’t let antipathy become your bedmate, Sergeant. We don’t have enough facts.”

“Still and all, Inspector—”

He gestured with the pencil to stop her, saying, “When we do, I expect they’ll support his presence at the Cherbourg Club on Wednesday night.”

“Being at the Cherbourg Club doesn’t exactly eliminate him as a suspect. He could have hired someone to set the
fir
e. He’s already admitted hiring someone to have Gabriella followed. And he didn’t exactly go skulking round the bushes himself to take those pictures of her and Fleming that he was talking about. So there’s another hiring for you.”

“Neither of which is illegal. Questionable, perhaps. Tasteless, to be sure. But not illegal.”

Barbara guffawed and returned to her chair. She flopped into it. “Pardon me, Inspector, but did our little Hugh manage to give you the impression he wouldn’t stoop to something as
tasteless
as murder? When did this occur? Before he talked about his wife’s amazing talents at fellatio or after he trotted out whatsername and gave her bum a nice squeeze just in case us rozzers were too thick to fi gure out what was what between them?”

“I’m not ruling him out,” Lynley said.

“Well, praised be Jesus.”

“But accepting Patten as the premeditated killer of Fleming presupposes he knew where Fleming was on Wednesday night. He’s denied knowing. I’m not convinced we can prove otherwise.” Lynley replaced photographs and reports in the folder. He removed his spectacles and rubbed his fingers on either side of the bridge of his nose.

“If Fleming phoned Gabriella and told her to expect him,” Barbara pointed out, “she could have phoned Patten and dropped him the word. Not deliberately, mind you. Not with the intention of Patten’s running out there to make Fleming cold meat. Just a bit of the old in-your-face-Hugh. That follows what he’s told us about her. There were other blokes who wanted her, and here was the proof.”

Lynley appeared to consider his sergeant’s words. “The telephone,” he said re
fle
ctively.

“What about it?”

“The conversation Fleming had with Mollison. He may have mentioned his Kent plans to him.”

“If you’re thinking a phone call’s the key, then his family must have known where Fleming was going as well. He had to cancel the trip to Greece, didn’t he? Or at least postpone it. He would have told them something. He
had
to have told them something since the son…what was his name?”

Lynley looked through her notes,
fli
pping forward two more pages. “Jimmy.”

“Right. Since Jimmy didn’t phone Mrs. Whitelaw on Wednesday when his dad failed to show. And if Jimmy knew why the trip was cancelled, he may have told his mum. That would have been natural. She was expecting the boy to be gone. He wasn’t. She would have asked what happened. He would have explained. So where does that take us?”

Lynley pulled a lined pad from the top side drawer of his desk. “Mollison,” he said as he wrote. “Fleming’s wife. His son.”

“Patten,” Barbara added.

“Gabriella,” Lynley finished. He underlined the name once, then a second time. He considered it thoughtfully. He underlined it again.

Barbara watched him for a moment, then said, “As to Gabriella, I don’t know, Inspector. It doesn’t really make sense. What’d she do? Pick off her lover and then blithely drive away in his car? It’s too easy. It’s too obvious. What’s she got for brains, if she did something like that? Wet cotton wool?”

“According to Patten.”

“We’re back to him. See? It’s the natural direction.”

“He has motive enough. As to the rest—” Lynley indicated the file and the photographs, “we’ll have to see how the evidence stacks up. Maidstone’s crime scene team will have
fin
ished with the cottage by mid-morning. If there’s something to be found, they’ll be bound to
fin
d it.”

“At least we know it wasn’t a suicide,” Barbara said.

“It wasn’t that. But it may not be a murder.”

“You can’t say it was an accident. Not with the cigarette and the matches that Ardery found in the chair.”

“I’m not saying it was an accident.” Lynley yawned, dropped his chin into his palm, and grimaced as the stubble on his face seemed to give him an idea of what hour it was. “We’ll need the number plates on Fleming’s car,” he said. “We’ll need to circulate a description. Green, Mrs. Whitelaw said. A Lotus. Possibly a Lotus-7. There must be paperwork on it somewhere. At the Kensington house, I should guess.”

“Right.” Barbara reached for her notebook and scrawled a reminder in it. “Did you notice the extra door in his bedroom by any chance? At the Whitelaw house?”

“Fleming’s?”

“Next to the wardrobe. Did you see it? A bathrobe was hanging from a hook in it.”

Lynley stared at his office door as if attempting recollection. “Brown velour,” he said, “with green stripes running through it. Yes. What about it?”

“The door, not the bathrobe. It leads to her room. That’s where I got the bedspread earlier.”

“Mrs. Whitelaw’s bedroom?”

“Interesting, don’t you think? Adjoining bedrooms. What does that suggest to you?”

Lynley got to his feet. “Sleeping,” he said. “Which is what we both ought to be doing at the moment.” He reached for the set of reports and photographs, tucking them neatly under his arm. “Come along, Sergeant. We’ll need to make an early start in the morning.”

When Jeannie couldn’t put it off any longer, she climbed the stairs. She’d done the washing up from the dinner that no one had eaten. She’d folded the tea towel neatly on the rod that was suctioned to the side of the fridge, just below a display of Stan’s school papers and a perky sketch of one of Sharon’s birds. She’d cleaned the cooker and moved on to wipe down the old red oilcloth that served to cover the kitchen table. Then she’d stood back and, without wanting to, remembered him picking at a worn spot in the oilcloth as he said, “It isn’t you, girl. It’s me. It’s her. It’s wanting something with her and not knowing what it is and not feeling right about you and the kids sitting here waiting for me to decide what’s to happen to the lot of you. Jeannie, I’m in a bad patch. Don’t you see that? I don’t know what I want. Oh damn it, Jean, don’t cry. Here. Please. I hate you to cry.” She remembered, without wanting to, his
fin
gers wiping at her cheeks, his hand closing over her wrist, his arm circling her shoulders, his mouth against her hair, saying, “Please, please. Make it easy for us, Jean.” Which she could not do.

She blasted the image from her head by sweeping the floor. She went on to scour the sink. She scraped away at the insides of the oven. She even took down the daisy curtains from the window in order to give them a thorough wash. But they couldn’t be washed now, so late at night, so she balled them up, left them on a chair, and knew it was time to see to her children.

She climbed the stairs slowly, shaking off the weariness that made her legs quake. She stopped in the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water. She removed her smock, slipped into her green housecoat, brushed her fingers against its pattern of interlocking rosebuds, and unpinned her hair. She’d had it up too long, drawn away from her face for her morning at Crissys, and she’d never loosened it once the police came to take her to Kent. Now it ached at the scalp as she released it from its large sunflower hairslide, and she winced and felt moisture come to her eyes as she settled it round her face and her ears. She sat on the toilet, not to pee but instead to buy time.