The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (35 page)

"Look, I appreciate you might not think that anything I've got to say is worth listening to, but this is important."

"To whom? You or me?"

"Both of us. Possibly, I think, everyone."

She raised a fine and languid eyebrow. He found himself once again entering a type of enchantment. Abruptly she leaned forward and it was not obviously a sexual gesture but it found him admiring her figure under the dressing gown. "Okay. Tell me."

*

Eisenmenger had finished but Beverley Wharton had not changed her attitude. She had listened to what he said whilst lying back on the sofa, her head forward and her eyes fixed upon him intently. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, crossed at delicious ankles. He felt that she was studying him, which he didn't mind, except that she hadn't offered him any hospitality and he felt thirsty. He had not told her everything, merely what he judged she might already know with enough embroidery to intrigue her. He hinted at PEP's involvement, but he gave few details even when she asked for them.

At last she said, "A pretty tale, well told." Her voice had a skeleton's bones of indifference. "But what of it to me?"

"You went to see Raymond Sweet."

Her eyes widened slightly, the only expression of surprise he detected. "Ah," she murmured. "I see."

"Was that an official visit?"

She weighed her answer before admitting, "Not entirely."

"So what's your interest?"

With a grave smile she said, "I also heard that Millie Sweet's death might have been … complicated."

"So where do we go from here?"

She gave the appearance of considering all the options. "We should perhaps take this to my superiors; let them handle it." He could tell from her tone that she wasn't going to do that. She didn't disappoint. "But there isn't enough here; all we have is speculation and innuendo backed up with scientific mumbo-jumbo."

He forgave her the blasphemy. "So … ?"

She stared hard at him and he had a feeling that he was entering a period of haggling. To pre-empt her, he said, "We need some help to trace Carlos. He's obviously the key to all this. You might be able to help."

Beverley smiled, shining condescension as if it were the light of benevolence. "Maybe, and maybe not. That's not the question, though, is it? What do I need of you?"

He had expected this, had come fully stocked with patience. "I think that what we know and what you know are different. I think that together, we might just be able to crack this. Separately, I think that you're as lost as we are."

She smiled, but said nothing. He hadn't made a joke and so assumed the smile was a request for more humility.

"I know you've got nothing to thank me for, Beverley … "

She laughed. Had he made a joke he would have been fooled into believing that she was greatly amused.

"Do you know how shitty my life has been of late?" she demanded.

Of course he didn't know. "I don't think you can blame me, Beverley," he pointed out as mildly and reasonably as he could. "You tried to screw me, but in the end you were screwed yourself. That's life."

She said nothing for a long time, her face expressionless and therefore full of apparent fury Then she sighed and relaxed into a smile. "Fair enough," she conceded. "However, it changes nothing. There is nothing here for me, other than possible trouble."

"This is big, Beverley, I can feel it. It has to be. Hartmann's bribe alone tells us that, without taking into account the organization required to steal the body and get it cremated."

If she was persuaded, it failed to shift the look of doubt. He continued, "What harm is it going to do you if you just make a few discreet enquiries? Either you'll get nowhere — in which case all you've done is waste a couple of hours — or you'll strike lucky and we'll have a way into this."

"But what do you think is going on? You haven't said."

"I'm not sure, Beverley," he admitted. "All I have is theories and suspicions. I think that Millie died because she had been infected with a man-made virus. I think that maybe Turner died because he knew all about it."

Suddenly she stood up. It was clearly a sign that he should leave and he, too, got to his feet. She went to the door, still giving no sign of what she intended to do. He followed her and they stood for a moment, her hand on the door lock.

When it came, the slap loosened his left second molar and smacked his jaws together so that he bit his tongue. He managed a brief, "Christ!" before he put his hand to his jaw and jerked his head back, too late and too little as the return slap came from the other side. While various noises rang around his cochleas and he reflected that she could have slapped for England, he heard Beverley say, "Don't ever fuck with me again, John, understand?"

He was still trying to recover equilibrium when he looked up, smiled and said, "But I don't understand, Beverley. You're supposed to be such a good fuck."

And she laughed, as if this were the greatest compliment she could have received. He asked, "Will you help us?"

The kiss that she gave him then almost made up for the violence, almost made him want to return to the time when he had come so close to lying with her, when she had somehow intoxicated him … "Maybe," she said, and abruptly he was back in the present, as she shut the door. He didn't see a broad smile spread over her face.

*

The atmosphere was not so much tense as rigid, as if time were stuttering lines, as if the three of them were picking their way carefully along a path, whilst eyeing each other warily. If he had been caught between an angry tigress deprived of its cub and an erupting volcano he couldn't have been more nervous. It had been agreed, in a manner rather reminiscent of the great international peace negotiations of old, that they should meet in a wine bar; Eisenmenger had even thought it wise to pick one roughly equidistant between the police station and Helena's office.

It was a lunchtime in a lifetime.

The darkness of the wine bar — Eisenmenger, despite the hostility that oozed around him, was side-tracked into wondering why all wine bars were dimly lit — gave them a spurious privacy in the playing out of their animosities.

Things started badly.

"I do so enjoy a pleasant drink with friends," was Beverley's opening remark. She was clad in a white dress that was spotless and creaseless and shameless; Eisenmenger neither noticed nor ignored.

Helena, herself wearing a short royal blue dress that Eisenmenger was pleased to notice appeared disinclined to cover her legs, had arrived last, her eyes sliding across Beverley Wharton much as they might have smeared across road-kill. Such light as there was glowed crimson, giving her hair a deep, cuprous shimmer. Eisenmenger had already bought white wine for all of them, mainly because he thought it unwise to leave the two of them together without a chaperone.

"Are we the best you can manage for 'friends'?"

If Helena had sounded any colder there would have been frost on her larynx.

Beverley smiled. "Don't put yourself down, Hel. May I call you Hel?"

Helena hated the diminutive but ignored the question. Instead she said, "Hope we're not keeping you, Bev. There must be some murderers you're trying to catch."

As she said this she put on her face a smile that quite plainly said,
Remember
Nikki
Exner
?
Remember
how
you
fouled
up
?

Eisenmenger could feel the atmosphere beginning to reek with noxious gases. "Perhaps we should get down to business."

Beverley flicked her eyes off Helena and on to Eisenmenger, but only after a second had silently screamed to its death. "Yes. Perhaps we should." She sipped some wine.

"You went to see Raymond Sweet. May we ask why?"

But it wasn't to be that easy. "I'm here because you asked me to be here. I thought you needed help; I don't see why I should answer any questions."

"But we need to share what we know."

Beverley Wharton raised an attractive, well-shaped eyebrow. "Do we? From my point of view, I have something you want. What do you have that I need?"

Eisenmenger sensed that Helena was about to unleash something. He said quickly, "We have context. I suspect that you know enough to appreciate that finding Carlos is important, but I doubt that you have much idea of what's behind it all." The guess was reasonable, and he followed it up with a pertinent question. "If you don't need us, why are you here?" He watched her reaction, was unsure if his words had been wasted.

Ignoring this, Beverley made a great show of not hiding her smile. "Carlos? You don't even know the second name, do you?"

Helena's voice when she spoke was not far from feral. It reminded Eisenmenger of a cat faced by a fox. "You don't realize the nature of what you're dealing with. You don't know the importance of finding him, whatever his name may be."

The policewoman stared at her. Eisenmenger for the first time was able to read her face, seeing the uncertainty he had guessed was inside her. Helena, however, hadn't finished. "If you don't feel you can cooperate with us, we can always go to Chief Inspector Lambert."

Eisenmenger was lost but he saw whatever was happening was not to Beverley Wharton's liking. He looked anew at Helena, who wore a look he had never before really recognized on her face. She continued, "The funny thing is, I contacted your station, and they seemed to think that you were ill."

The wine bar smelled of damp. It wasn't an unpleasant odour, and it heightened the sense of being in a cellar, but suddenly Beverley Wharton seemed to think that she could detect a certain tang of rot. Her face hardened while around her eyes there was a darkening that emphasized the dangerous brightness of her eyes. She and Helena regarded each other for long moments that seemed to Eisenmenger to meld into a single heart's beat.

Then she nodded and Eisenmenger had the feeling that it was a sign of acknowledgement. She put the glass to her lips, skimmed the surface, put it down and murmured, "Congratulations."

Helena's voice sounded almost tired as she said, "So, can we cut the crap? I don't want to be here any more than you do, but John's persuaded me that we need you and it seems obvious that you need us."

Eisenmenger asked, "Just how official is your interest?"

"Not at all." She sighed. "Not at all. This is my baby; mine and mine alone, for the time being."

"May I ask why?"

A shrug. "Something's going on — Hartmann told me what happened to him — and I'm being told that Pel-Ebstein are in it up to their proverbial, but beyond that, you're quite right. I don't know any details and I don't have any evidence. Without evidence, I'm going to be laughed out of the force."

He glanced at Helena who was clearly unconvinced by this, and he, too, had the feeling that she had calculated how much to tell, how much to leave lying. Her story wasn't without contradiction, but he let it go.

"And you think that we can supply the details? But what do we get in return?"

"You get my help."

"You haven't found Carlos yet?"

She smiled knowingly. "Not yet. Nor Stein, if you were going to ask." Here was a new name to them and Beverley didn't miss their looks of perplexity. "You don't know that much, then." Cutting in before Helena could react, Eisenmenger said, "I suspect that you know some things, we know others. As I told you, we need each other."

For a moment, Beverley looked as if she might argue, then decided against it. Eisenmenger looked at Helena and he raised his eyebrows. She shrugged.
I
suppose
we
must
.

Beverley took an age but eventually she said, through a down-turned mouth, "I guess that's fair. Okay. I think we have a deal."

They didn't shake hands.

*

The enormity of what they were dealing with overwhelmed them. When Beverley's information was combined with what they either knew or suspected, the canvas grew and stretched and the picture on it became far deeper, far darker than they had hitherto suspected. The wine bar became a sanctum, the world outside dangerous.

Helena found herself fighting feelings not just of shock but also of actual nausea as she learned of the death of Justine Nielsen and the disappearances of Maurice Stein and Jean-Jacques Renvier. Eisenmenger, as ever working his way through ramifications, possibilities, improbabilities and outcomes, found himself almost overwhelmed by what they now knew. It was as if they had previously possessed only a sketch, and now they had a three-dimensional sculpture; as if their beliefs were now solid and coming to hunt them down. Beverley found feelings of excitement wrestling with unfamiliar suspicions of uncertainty. Her instincts had been proven right — this was huge — but it was clear that the forces they were intending to oppose were consequently huge. Perhaps too big, perhaps literally overwhelming.

When Beverley had informed them that two of the survivors from the laboratory fire had died within a few days of each other, there was shocked silence until Eisenmenger said quietly, "Mr Rosenthal is very efficient."