Playing for the Ashes (94 page)

Beans and Toast finished their meal and went to Livie’s canvas chair. Beans lay at her side, his head within petting distance should the whimsy take her. Toast lowered himself gingerly in front of her and rested his chin on her heavy-soled shoe. Livie bent over the newspaper. Chris had already read the front page story, so he knew she was noting the relevant words
chief suspect in the crime, charges due to be brought, troubled youth with a history of delinquency
. She lifted her hand to the pictures, dropped it to the largest one that was centred among the others. In it, the boy lay like a sodden scarecrow in his mother’s arms, with the river lapping round their waists and the soaked DI from Scotland Yard bending over them. As Chris watched, Livie’s hand began to crumple the picture. Whether the action was deliberate or the result of a fi brillation of her muscles, he couldn’t tell.

He went to her side. He cupped his hand round her cheek and pressed her head to his thigh.

“It doesn’t mean they’ll actually bring charges,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that, Chris. Does it?”

“Livie.” His tone was gently admonishing. It said, Lie if you must, but not to yourself.

“They won’t bring charges.” She drew the photograph into a wrinkled mass beneath the palm of her hand. “And even if they do, what can happen to him? He’s just turned sixteen. What do they do with kids who break the law when they’re only sixteen?”

“That’s not actually the point, is it?”

“They send them to Borstal or a place like that. They make them go to school. At school they get trained. They take the GCSE. Or they learn a trade. The paper says he hasn’t been in school, so if someone
made
him go, if he had no choice because there was nothing else for him to do once he got there…”

Chris didn’t bother to argue the point. Livie wasn’t a fool. In a moment she would see the sand upon which she was constructing her suppositions, even if she didn’t want to admit to the fact.

She let the newspaper go. She brought her right arm to her stomach and hugged herself as if she ached inside. Slowly, she lifted her left arm from where it dangled and curved it round Chris’s leg, leaning into him. He stroked her cheek with his thumb.

“He confessed,” she said, although her words lacked the conviction that had underscored her comments about Borstal. “Chris, he confessed. He was there. The newspapers said he was there. They said the police have evidence to prove it. If he was there and if he confessed, then he must have done it. Don’t you see? Maybe I’m the one who’s misunderstanding what happened.”

“I don’t think so,” Chris said.

“Then
why
?” She grasped his leg harder as she said the second word. “Why have the police kept after him like they have? Why’s he confessed? Why’s he telling the police he killed his dad? It doesn’t make sense. He must know he’s guilty of something. That’s it. It has to be. He’s guilty of something. He just isn’t saying what. Don’t you think that’s what’s happening?”

“I think what’s happening is he’s lost his dad, Livie. He’s lost him all at once when he wasn’t expecting to lose him at all. Don’t you think he might be reacting to that? Because how does it feel to have your dad alive one day and then have him dead the next without even having a chance to say good-bye?”

Her arm dropped from his leg. “That’s not fair,” she whispered.

He persisted. “What did you do, Livie? Shag some bloke you picked up in a pub, didn’t you? He offered you a fiver if you’d let him give you a length and you were drunk that night, weren’t you, and you were feeling so low that you didn’t give a shit what happened to you next. Because your dad was dead and you hadn’t even been allowed to go to his funeral. Isn’t that what happened? Isn’t that how you got started at the game? Weren’t you acting crazy? Because of your dad? Even though you didn’t want to admit it?”

“It’s not the same.”

“The hurt’s the same. How you deal with the hurt is what’s different.”

“He’s not saying what he’s saying to deal with hurt.”

“You don’t know that. And even if you did, what he’s doing and why he’s doing it isn’t the point in the
fir
st place.”

She moved to dislodge his hand from her head. She smoothed out the newspaper and began to refold it. She placed it on the others he’d brought her that morning, but she didn’t make any effort to turn her attention to them. Instead, she raised her head to Browning’s Island. She resumed the position she’d been in when he’d returned from his run with the dogs.

He said, “Livie, you’ve got to tell them.”

“I don’t owe them anything. I don’t owe anyone anything.”

Her face was settled into the stony look she adopted whenever she wanted to dismiss a subject. To argue further was useless at this juncture. He sighed. He touched his
fin
gers to the top of her head, where her chopped-up hair grew wild, like weeds.

He said, “But it
is
about owing, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t bloody owe them—”

“Not them. Yourself.”

Lynley went home first. Denton was in the midst of his afternoon tea, cup in hand, feet up on the drawing room coffee table, head back against the sofa, eyes closed. Andrew Lloyd Webber was blasting from the stereo as Denton bellowed along with Michael Crawford. Lynley wondered idly when
Phantom of the Opera
would go out of style. Soon wouldn’t be soon enough, he thought.

He crossed to the stereo and lowered the volume, which left Denton howling, “…the music of the niiiiiiiiiight,” into a moderately silent room.

“You’re flat,” Lynley said drily.

Denton jumped to his feet. He said, “Sorry. I was just—”

“Believe me, I have the general idea,” Lynley interrupted.

Denton hastily put his teacup on the table. He brushed imaginary crumbs from its surface onto the palm of his hand. He deposited the same onto the tray on which he’d thoughtfully arranged sandwiches, biscuits, and grapes for himself. He said sheepishly, “Tea, m’lord?”

“I’m on my way out.”

Denton looked from Lynley to the door. “Haven’t you just come in?”

“Yes. I’m glad to say I was regaled by only the last twenty seconds of your warbling.” He headed out of the room, saying, “Carry on without me. But, if you will, at a lower volume. Dinner at half past eight. For two.”

“Two?”

“Lady Helen’s joining me.”

Denton brightened visibly. “Is it good news, then? Rather, have you and she…What I mean to ask is—”

“Half past eight,” Lynley said.

“Yes. Right.” Denton made much of gathering up teapot, plates, and cup.

As he climbed the stairs, Lynley re
fle
cted upon the fact that there was no real news to impart about Helen, to Denton or to anyone for that matter. Just a late-night phone call on Wednesday after she’d seen the newspaper stories covering his Tuesday evening run through the Isle of Dogs. She’d said, “My God, Tommy. Are you quite all right?” He’d said, “Yes. Fine. I’ve missed you, darling.” But when she’d begun to go on with a careful, “Tommy. I’ve been thinking since Sunday morning. As you asked me to do,” he discovered that he couldn’t cope with holding a conversation that might touch upon their lives. So he said, “Let’s talk at the weekend, Helen.” And they’d agreed on dinner.

In his bedroom he went to the wardrobe and began pulling out clothes. Blue jeans, polo shirt, a worn pair of gym shoes, a tatty pair of white socks. He changed from his suit, tossing jacket, trousers, and waistcoat onto the bed. He looked into the cheval mirror on the chest of drawers and studied his re
fle
ction. The hair was all wrong. He ran a hand through it, dishevelling as he went. He fetched his car keys from his trousers and left.

The heavy traffic of late Friday afternoon slowed his progress from Belgravia to Little Venice. It was particularly thick in the vicinity of Hyde Park where a tourist coach had stalled on Park Lane, leaving a trail of vehicles stranded behind it.

Past the park, conditions weren’t much better on the Edgware Road. Everyone, it seemed, was intent upon leaving the city for the weekend. He couldn’t blame them. The weather was May perfect, an invitation to either the country or the coast. He wished coast or country were his destination. He didn’t savour the thought of the hours to come, what might follow those hours, or how much depended upon them.

He parked on the south side of Little Venice and, newspapers once again tucked under his arm, he took the long way round Warwick Crescent to the bridge that spanned Regent’s Canal. There he paused. He gazed at the murky water where five Canada geese were paddling in the direction of the pool and Browning’s Island.

He could see Faraday’s barge quite well from here. Although it was still light out and would be for another two hours, no one was on the deck of the barge and lamps had been lit inside it. They cast bands of yellow-gold against the glass. As he watched, he saw the yellow-gold waver as someone within passed between the window and the light. Faraday, he thought. Lynley would have preferred to meet with Olivia alone, but he knew how unlikely it was that she would ever agree to a meeting without her companion present.

Faraday met him at the door to the cabin, before Lynley had the chance to knock. He was halfway up the stairs, dressed in running gear, and the dogs were milling round his legs. One scratched at the step upon which Faraday stood. The other yelped.

Faraday didn’t speak. He merely stepped back down into the cabin of the barge and when the dogs began to hurtle themselves up the stairway towards Lynley and the out-ofdoors, he said, “Dogs, no!”

Lynley descended. Faraday watched, his face chary. His eyes
fli
cked to the newspapers under Lynley’s arm, then to his face.

“She’s here?” Lynley said.

A crashing of metal against lino in the galley answered him. Olivia’s voice said, “Damn. Chris, I dropped the rice. It’s gone everywhere. I’m sorry.”

Faraday called over his shoulder, “Leave it.”

“
Leave
it? Goddamn it, Chris, stop treating me like—”

“The inspector’s here, Livie.”

Abrupt silence fell. Lynley could sense that Olivia had drawn in her breath and was holding it as she tried to decide how and if she could avoid this final confrontation. After a moment in which Faraday looked towards the galley and the dogs trotted to see what was what, the sound of movement began. The aluminium walker creaked as it took her weight. Shoe soles dragged sloppily against the
flo
or. Olivia grunted, then said, “Chris, I’m stuck. It’s the rice. I can’t get round it.”

Faraday went to her. He said, “Beans! Toast! Go lie down!” and the sound of their nails against lino faded as they went obediently to the front of the barge.

Lynley switched on the remaining unlit lamps in the main room. Olivia could still play with the disease if she wished to avoid him, but he wouldn’t allow her any further variations of shadows and light. He looked for a table on which he could lay out the newspapers he’d brought, but aside from Faraday’s worktable against the far wall, there was nothing he could use except one of the armchairs and they wouldn’t do. He laid the papers on the
flo
or.

“Well?”

He swung about. Olivia had worked her way to the opening between the galley and the main room. She was slung between the handrails of her walker, her shoulders caving against her weight. Her face appeared at once pastecoloured and shiny, and as she inched forward, she avoided his eyes.

Faraday trailed her, one hand held up, palm outward, a foot or so from her back. She paused when her lowered eyes caught sight of the newspapers, but she gave another grunt— sounding somewhere between derision and disgust—and struggled carefully round them to place herself in one of the corduroy armchairs. When she lowered herself into it, she kept the walker in front of her, as a line of defence. Faraday started to move it. She said, “No.” And then, “Will you fetch my fags, Chris?”

She used her lighter against a cigarette that he shook from the packet. She blew out smoke in a thin grey stream. She said to Lynley, “Are you done up for a masquerade, or something?”

He said, “I’m off duty.”

She inhaled and blew out another grey stream. Her lips were pursed and made her expression look angry, as perhaps she intended or perhaps she was. “Don’t give me that. Cops’re never off duty.”

“Perhaps. But I’m not here as a cop.”

“Then what’re you here as? A private citizen? Visiting the sick in your free time? Don’t make me laugh. A cop’s always a cop, on duty or off.” She cranked her head away from him to Faraday. The other man had gone to sit at the kitchen table, his chair turned round so it faced theirs in the sitting room. “You got the tin over there, Chris? I need the tin.”

He brought it to her, then retreated once again. She tucked the tin between her legs and tapped a bare millimetre of ash from her cigarette. She was wearing a silver hoop through her nostril and a line of silver studs on one ear, but the rings that had decorated all of her
fin
gers had given way to bracelets stacked along her left arm. These jangled together as she smoked.

“So what d’you want this time?”

“Just to talk to you, actually.”

“Haven’t got the darbies with you? Haven’t made arrangements for my bed-sit in Holloway?”

“That won’t be necessary, as you can see.”

She followed his lead by clumsily using her foot to indicate the newspapers, which he’d laid on the floor. She said, “So it’s Borstal, then. Tell me, Inspector. What’s a yob like that get in our current justice system for doing the business on his own dad? A year?”