Playing for the Ashes (41 page)

Mollison said, “I thought she might have said something to you. In March. At the dinner.”

“She was there with Hugh.”

“I meant in the cloakroom. Or something.”

“We had no time alone. And even if we had, revealing that you’re fucking someone outside your marriage isn’t generally cloakroom conversation, Guy. Among women, that is.” Her face and her tone belied her choice of vocabulary. All three served to pin her husband’s eyes on hers. A silence played among them, and Lynley let it stretch out. Beyond the open door, a boat on the river sounded a single blast of its horn. As if this was the cause, a current of chill air gusted into the room. The breeze susurrated the palm fronds and feathered away from her cheeks the strands of hazelnut hair that had escaped the peach ribbon that bound it at the base of Allison’s neck. Guy stood hastily and closed the door.

Lynley rose as well. Sergeant Havers shot him an are-you-crazy-his-wicket’s-as-stickyas-it’s-going-to-get look. She reluctantly dug her way out of the overstuffed sofa. Lynley took out his card. He said, “If anything else comes to mind, Mr. Mollison,” and when Mollison turned from the door, he handed the card over to him.

“I’ve told you everything,” Mollison said. “I don’t know what else…”

“Occasionally something jogs the memory. A chance remark. An overheard conversation. A photograph. A dream. Telephone me if that happens to you.”

Mollison shoved the card into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Sure. But I don’t think— ”

“If it happens,” Lynley said. He nodded to Mollison’s wife and ended the interview.

He and Havers didn’t speak until they were in the lift, gliding down to the entry where the porter would release the doorlocks and let them out into the street. Havers said, “He’s dancing a jig with the truth.”

Lynley said, “Yes.”

“Then why aren’t we up there pinning him to the wall?”

The lift doors
shooshed
open. They stepped out into the entry. The porter came out of his office and marched them to the door with the formality of a prison guard releasing convicts. Lynley said nothing as they went out into the night.

Havers lit a cigarette as they walked towards the Bentley. She said, “Sir, why aren’t we—”

“We don’t need to do what his wife can do for us,” was Lynley’s reply. “She’s a barrister. There’s a blessing in that.”

At the car, they stood on opposite sides. Lynley gazed in the direction of the Prospect of Whitby where a few pub regulars had spilled into the street. Havers puffed away on her cigarette, bulking up on the nicotine before the long drive home.

“But she won’t be on our side,” Havers said. “Not with a baby due. Not if Mollison’s involved.”

“We don’t need her on our side. We just need her to tell him what he forgot to ask.”

Havers stopped the cigarette midway to her mouth. “Forgot to ask?”

“‘Where’s Gabriella now?’” Lynley said. “The fire was in Gabriella’s lodgings. The coppers have got one corpse they’re nosing round, but that corpse is Fleming. So where the hell is Gabriella?” Lynley disarmed the car’s security system. “Interesting, isn’t it?” he said as he opened the door and slid inside. “All the things people reveal by saying nothing.”

CHAPTER
11

T
he beer garden of the Load of Hay tavern was aswarm with life. Fairy lights glittered from the trees and made a coruscating rooftop above the drinkers, shining on the bare arms and long legs of those celebrants of the ever-warming May weather. Unlike the previous evening, however, Barbara did not give a passing thought to joining them as she cruised past She still hadn’t yet imbibed her weekly pint of Bass, she still hadn’t spoken to a soul in her neighbourhood aside from Bhimani at the grocery, but it was half past ten and she’d been up too long with too little sleep to bolster her. She was knackered.

She took the first parking space she found, next to a mound of rubbish bags, which bled weeds and grass cuttings onto the pavement. It was in Steele’s Road, directly beneath an alder whose reaching branches stretched high above the street and promised a prodigious speckling of bird droppings by morning. Not that bird droppings mattered all that much, when one considered the condition of the Mini. Indeed, if her luck held, Barbara thought, there might be enough guano to plug up the holes that currently freckled the car’s rusting bonnet.

She picked her way through the rubbish bags to the pavement and trudged in the direction of Eton Villas. She yawned, rubbed the soreness from her shoulder, and vowed to dump out the contents of her bag and do some committed jettisoning of her belongings. What was in the damn thing anyway, she wondered as she lugged it towards her home. It felt as if she were hauling round a load of bricks. It felt, in fact, as if she’d stopped by Jaffri’s Fine Groceries, picked up another two bags of ice, and tucked them in with the rest of her belongings.

Her footsteps halted at the mental picture her mind created of Jaffri’s and ice. Bloody hell in sodding spades, she thought. She’d forgotten about the refrigerator.

She picked up her pace. She rounded the corner to Eton Villas. She hoped against hope and prayed against prayer that gran’s son’s son had managed to figure things out for himself when he made the long drive from Fulham to Chalk Farm in that open-back lorry of his. Barbara hadn’t told him exactly where to deliver the refrigerator, incorrectly assuming that she would be home when he arrived. But since she hadn’t been, surely he would have asked someone for direction. He wouldn’t have left it sitting on the pavement, would he? And no way would he have simply dropped it in the street.

He’d done neither, she found, when she got to the house. She went up the drive, skirted a late model red Golf, pushed through the gate, and saw that gran’s son’s son had managed— with or without assistance, she was never to know—to manoeuvre the refrigerator across the lawn in front of the house and down four narrow concrete steps. Now it stood, half-wrapped in a pink blanket with one leg sinking into a delicate mound of chamomile that grew between the flagstones in front of the ground-
flo
or
fla
t.

“Wrong,” Barbara fumed. “Wrong, wrong, wrong. You
fla
ming absolutely unforgivable
twit
.”

She kicked at a
fla
gstone and set her shoulder against the rope that held the pink blanket in place. She gave a grunt and a shove and tested the weight she would have to heave to get the refrigerator back up the four steps, shoo it along the side of the house, and shift it into her cottage at the bottom of the garden. She managed to raise one side two inches, but the effort sank the other side deeper into the chamomile, which, no doubt, the resident of the ground-floor flat was growing for a crucial medicinal need that would now go wanting because of gran’s son’s more-than-useless son.

She said, “Bloody bleeding hell,” and gave the refrigerator another heave. It sank another inch. She heaved once more. Once more it sank. She said, “Stuff it,” with as much energy as she had used in the heaving, and she plunged her hand into her shoulder bag and brought forth her cigarettes. Disgruntled, she went to a wooden bench that stood in front of the french doors of the ground-
flo
or
fla
t. She sat down and lit up. She observed the refrigerator through the smoke and tried to decide what to do.

A light went on above her head. One of the french doors opened. Barbara turned to see the same small, dark girl who had been laying plates on the table for dinner the previous night. She wasn’t in a school uniform this time, however. She was in a nightgown, long and perfectly white with a flounce at the hem and a drawstring at the neck. Her hair was still in plaits.

“Is it yours, then?” the girl asked solemnly, using one toe to scratch the opposite ankle. “We’ve been wondering about that.”

Barbara looked beyond her for the rest of
we
. The flat was dark save for a rod of light that extended from an open doorway in the back.

“I forgot it was going to be delivered,” Barbara said. “Some idiot bloke delivered it here by mistake.”

“Yes,” the girl said. “I saw him. I tried to tell him that we didn’t want a refrigerator, but he wouldn’t listen. We’ve got one already, I told him, and I would’ve let him in to see for himself only I’m not supposed to let anyone in when Dad’s not home and he wasn’t home yet. He’s home now, though.”

“Is he?”

“Yes. But he’s asleep. That’s why I’m talking low. So I don’t wake him. He brought chicken for dinner and I made courgettes and we had
chapatis
and then he fell asleep. I’m not supposed to let anyone in when he’s not home. I’m not supposed to even open the door. But it’s all right now, isn’t it, because he’s home. I can shout if I need him, can’t I?”

“Sure,” Barbara said. She flicked a wedge of ash onto the neat flagstones and when the girl’s dark eyes followed its descent with a thoughtful frown, Barbara slipped one trainershod foot over and casually ground the ash to a smudge of grey-black. The girl observed this and sucked on her lip.

Barbara said, “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“I don’t sleep well, I’m afraid. I mostly read till I can’t keep my eyes open. I have to wait till Dad falls asleep before I turn on my light, though, because if I turn on my light while he’s still awake, he comes into my room and takes the book away. He says I should count backwards from one hundred to fall asleep, but I think it’s so much nicer to read, don’t you? Besides, I can count backwards from one hundred faster than I can fall asleep and when I get to zero, what am I supposed to do?”

“That’s a problem, all right.” Barbara peered beyond the child again, into the
fla
t. “Isn’t your mum here, then?”

“My mum’s visiting friends. In Ontario. That’s in Canada.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“She hasn’t sent me a postcard yet. I expect she’s busy, which is what happens when one visits friends. Her name’s Malak, my mum. Well, that’s not her real name, is it? It’s what Dad calls her. Malak means angel. Isn’t that pretty? I wish it was my name. I’m Hadiyyah, which I don’t think is nearly as pretty as Malak. And it doesn’t mean angel.”

“It’s a nice enough name.”

“Have you got a name?”

“Sorry. It’s Barbara. I live round the back.”

Hadiyyah’s cheeks formed little pouches as she smiled. “In that sweet little cottage?” She clasped her hands to her chest. “Oh, I wanted us to live there when we first moved here except it’s far too small. It’s just like a play house. Can I see it?”

“Sure. Why not? Sometime.”

“Can I see it now?”

“Now?” Barbara asked blankly. She was beginning to feel a shade uncomfortable. Wasn’t this how things began just before an innocent suspect was charged with committing a vile crime against a child? “I don’t know about now. Shouldn’t you be in bed? What if your dad wakes up?”

“He never wakes up before morning. Ever. Only if I have a nightmare.”

“But if he heard a noise and woke up and you weren’t here—”

“I’ll be here, won’t I?” She offered an el
fin
smile. “I’ll just be at the back of the house. I could write him a note and leave it on my bed in case he wakes up. I could tell him I’ve just gone round to the back. I could tell him that I’m with you—I’ll even use your name, I’ll say I’m with Barbara—and that you’ll bring me back when I’ve seen the cottage. Don’t you think that would do?”

No, Barbara thought. What would do would be a long hot shower, a fried egg sandwich, and a cup of Horlicks, because a single strip of grilled ham and a dollop of cheese with a fancy French name didn’t count for dinner. And afterwards, what would also do, if she could keep her eyes opened, would be quarter of an hour’s literary discovery of exactly what Flint Southern had throbbing for Star Flaxen in those sculpted blue jeans he was wearing.

“Some other time.” Barbara slipped the strap of her bag on to her shoulder and heaved herself from the wooden bench.

“I expect you’re tired, aren’t you?” Hadiyyah said. “I expect you’re dragging.”

“Right.”

“Dad’s like that when he gets home from work. He flops onto the sofa and can’t move for an hour. I bring him tea. He likes Earl Grey tea. I can make tea.”

“Can you?”

“I know how long to seep it. It’s all in the seeping.”

“The seeping.”

“Oh yes.” The little girl had her hands still clasped at her chest as if she held a talisman between them. Her great dark eyes were so beseeching that Barbara wanted to tell her brusquely to toughen up, to get used to life. Instead, she flipped her cigarette to the
fla
gstones, crushed it out with the toe of her trainer, and put the butt in the pocket of her trousers.

“Write him a note,” she said. “I’ll wait.”

Hadiyyah’s smile was beatific. She spun. She darted into the flat. The slash of light widened as she went into the room at the back. In less than two minutes, she returned.

“I stuck the note on my lamp,” she confided. “But he probably won’t wake up. He doesn’t, usually. Unless I have a nightmare.”

“Right,” Barbara said and headed for the steps. “It’s this way.”

“I know the way. I do. I do.” Hadiyyah skipped ahead. Over her shoulder she called, “Next week’s my birthday. I’ll be eight years old. Dad says I can have a party. He says I can have chocolate cakes and strawberry ice cream. Will you come? You don’t need to bring a present at all.” She shot away without waiting for an answer.

Barbara noted that she still didn’t have on shoes. Great, she thought. The kid would get pneumonia and she’d be to blame.

She caught Hadiyyah up at the patch of lawn that lay between the main house and Barbara’s cottage. Here, the child had paused to right an overturned tricycle. “It belongs to Quentin,” she said. “He’s always leaving his stuff outside. His mum goes quite distracted and shouts at him from the windows, but he never listens. I expect he doesn’t know what she wants from him, don’t you?”