The Winds of Change (38 page)

‘The Cornwall business. It’s of no more interest to us, so stay out of it.’

‘Oh, but it is of interest. Viktor Baumann’s involved there, too.’

‘If you’re talking about these children, that’s part of Organized Crime, that’s SO1, the pedophilia unit. Isn’t that your friend Blakeley’s case? Over in West Central? Before you stuck your oar in?’

‘My oar was little Alice Smith, the child shot in the back. That’s my case, if you remember. This is all down to Viktor Baumann. God knows what else he’s been getting up to. I’m just hoping he doesn’t have more houses like that one. The Devon and Cornwall police think he might have abducted his daughter three years ago–’

Racer interrupted. ‘That’s nothing to do with us. You closed the Alice Smith case. The child was shot by one of the other girls. The same girl who murdered the pimp’–he fussed a manila folder around until he came to it–’Eddie Noon. Got charges as long as your arm. This girl’s pretty good at shooting people in the back, isn’t she?’

Jury winced. Was the man laughing over this? Racer, for the moment, sobered up. ‘God, but what’s it coming to, kids killing kids?’

‘She probably saved my life.’ What was going to happen to Samantha? Anything’d be better than what it was before. Just to be rid of her, just to be rid of her... Samantha had repeated it like a litany. She had actually smiled.

Unable to fix on an appropriate response to Jury’s saved life, Racer mumbled something and put the folder in his out box. ‘So we’re shut of this, Jury.’

‘No, we aren’t. Part of it’s still open–as I’ve been saying–’

‘That part is Devon and Cornwall police. As for you, my lad, pending further inquiry–’

He was a broken record. Jury stopped listening and watched Cyril, who had maneuvered himself around the room in the catsize space (it might as well have been purpose built) between the wall and the outer edge of molding. He was now sitting in his favorite spot over Racer’s desk. This was the spot from which he’d made many three-point landings onto various parts of the desk. He sat now washing his paw and waiting his moment.

How many ways could Jury say it? The man had cloth ears.

‘As I’ve said–sir–the missing–’ or dead, Jury didn’t add ‘—child is Viktor Baumann’s daughter. She was four years old. One of the reasons I went into that house was to see if he was keeping her there.’

‘What? The man’s own child?’ Racer washed at the air with his hands, palms out as if to keep Jury and Jury’s sick ideas at bay.

‘It goes on.’

‘In the States it goes on. Not here.’

This earth, this realm, this England.

Sure.

Johnny Blakeley was still stationed at West End Central where part of the pedophilia unit was housed. It was there that Irene Murchison had been taken. She’d been in one of the interrogation rooms off and on over the last thirty-six hours. They could hold her on a score of charges; she was ‘garbage,’ Johnny said. What Johnny was after was an admission that the whole setup was Viktor Baumann’s.

‘Hell of a setup it is, too,’ Johnny was telling Jury an hour later over drinks in the Crown. ‘Viktor’s friends–well, she didn’t tell me precisely that, but it’s obvious, isn’t it? ‘Very particular gentlemen.’ Her words. The woman talks like she just stepped out of a Galsworthy novel, which is not, I hasten to add, her real milieu.’

‘These ‘gentlemen’–meaning ‘customers’? I’m thick today, as I just left Racer’s office.’

Johnny snickered. ‘It’s Viktor’s mates, isn’t it? The ring. I want some names, man. How can this woman be willing to take the fall for this, Richard?’

‘Women have been doing it for centuries.’

‘Hell, she’s got to be twenty years older than him.’ Jury shrugged. ‘She’s a pivotal character in his life; she sees the whole thing runs smoothly; she keeps the girls in line.’ More like scared into submission. Jury could not forget the deathly quiet when he looked into that room. The unearthly silence. No child should be frightened into silence. ‘She’s not doing this against her better judgment, remember. She likes it. She likes it a lot.’ Jury drank off his lager.

Johnny signed to the barman, held up two fingers. The barman nodded. ‘She’s not giving him up, Rich,’ he said again.

‘She admitted’ she knew him, though.’ Jury was watching a desultory game of snooker between one man covered in tattoos and another who had a musician’s fingers. The musician lobbed the green ball into a pocket. Smatttering of applause. He thought of Wiggins and Cody Platt. He said, ‘I didn’t screw everything up for you, Johnny, did I?’

The barman knifed foam off Johnny’s Guinness. ‘My God, no,’ Johnny said. ‘What you and that Cornwall cowboy did was pretty much what I’ve been trying to work out how to do for months. Well, now we’re sorted.’ Johnny smiled broadly, lifted his pint as if in a toast.

Cowboy. Jury smiled, as he lifted his.

When Jury walked into the lab, Phyllis Nancy was speaking into a mike suspended above the table in the middle of the room. A stream of blood ran from the body along a depression around the table and dripped into a chrome bucket. The cold blue light that emanated from a source he couldn’t identify gave the place the look and feel of an outer space experience. She might have been an alien of higher intelligence performing an autopsy on an earthling.

Her hands were covered in blood, but her white coat was as clean as glare ice. He wondered how she managed that trick. But then he remembered that Phyllis knew the parameters of everything, the limits, the boundaries. There was an element of magic in this. Or perhaps it was something not at all magical. Jury (and a number of others) knew that the sight of blood made her sick. Forget med school–nearly everyone there went a little woozy on his or her first encounter with a diced-up body. Only, they got over it.

Phyllis hadn’t. When she started out, she said as soon as she made the first cut she would have to make for the toilet and throw up.

After that she could manage the rest of the autopsy. Soon, she could get through half of the autopsy before she had to throw up, and then nearly all of it until the nausea hit her. Now (she had told Jury) it didn’t happen until after she had finished. ‘It’s incredible improvement, considering; one day I’ll have tapered off until the nausea has stopped altogether.’

Jury had laughed. ‘You make it sound like giving up smoking.’ She considered this. ‘No, smoking is much harder to give up.’ It was all a great joke; Phyllis thought so, too. A coroner who couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

‘Why are you in this business, then? It’s like Hannibal being afraid of walls or Nelson afraid of water. It’s so hard on you, Phyllis.’

‘Not really. Just a few moments of discomfort. And a little embarrassment, granted.’

‘You take it all so calmly.’

‘But so do you when you find a body in the street, like little Alice Smith, facedown in her own blood. You have at least to give the appearance of calm.’

Right now, she looked up from the table. He could still tell her eyes were green behind the plastic protective glasses both she and her assistants wore.

‘Richard!’

‘Hello, Phyllis.’ He nodded toward the table. ‘Is this one of your all-nighters?’

‘Not now it isn’t. I assume you have something in mind.’ He smiled. ‘I do. Dinner. I know you don’t eat before an autopsy.’

She stripped off the gloves and discarded the mask in one fluid motion, then said to her assistant, ‘You can finish up.’ It was that about Phyllis which made him smile just thinking of it. She could always make you think she’d been waiting for you.

And only you.

She started toward him and then stopped, her hand on her chest. For a moment she looked at the floor, then lifted her head and said, ‘Just wait here. I won’t be a tick.’ And she hurried off.

To the toilet, of course.

They ordered salads to start and duck as an entree.

While Jury was inspecting the wine list (about which he knew next to nothing) the sommelier arrived with a bottle of burgundy whose wax-sealed cork looked a thousand years old and probably went for a pound for every year.

‘Thanks, but we didn’t–’

The sommelier smiled and cut him off. ‘No, sir. This is with Mr. Rice’s compliments.’

‘Oh,’ said Jury.

‘My word,’ said Phyllis. ‘How very nice of him.’ The sommelier continued: ‘Mr. Rice asked me to choose after you’d ordered. You’re having the duck; I think you’ll like this.’ He applied a straightforward opener to it, twisted and pulled up the cork. Then he poured a little into Jury’s glass.

Jury sipped. ‘It’s wonderful.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ He poured. He left.

‘Mr. Rice,’ said Phyllis, ‘must really like you.’ She frowned a bit. ‘That name sounds familiar. Do I know him?’

Jury nodded. ‘You met him. Nell Ryder. Cambridge.’

‘Of course. ‘

‘Vernon Rice was her stepbrother.’ He looked into his wineglass. ‘He really loved her. He really did.’ Why did he keep repeating things lately? As if what he said was too much to say only once. He felt stupid about it. ‘I called him to get in here tonight. Aubergine usually has bookings weeks ahead.’

The waiter had come with their salads, set them before Phyllis and Jury with what seemed invisible hands, come and gone while Jury was saying this. Jury looked at his salad, appetite suddenly gone.

‘It’s Nell and all of these girls, isn’t it?’

‘What?’ He raised his eyes.

She smiled at him but didn’t answer. But the question was strangely comforting. Perhaps he needed some sort of understanding about what he felt. His appetite returned as suddenly as it had left.

She said, ‘You saved those little girls.’

‘I might have freed them, but I didn’t save them.’

‘I don’t know. It might amount to the same thing, freedom and salvation. You certainly saved them from hell on earth.’

‘One, maybe. Rosie, her name is. I think she might have been the only one who hadn’t yet been flung at some man like a piece of meat. Rosie.’ He smiled, remembering.

‘No one can fling them at any man now, Richard. You took a terrible chance. Your job, your future on the line. Don’t tell me you should have done more.’

Forking up a piece of lettuce topped by a nut he didn’t recognize, Jury said, ‘I should have done more.’

Phyllis sat back in the banquette. ‘You should have killed this Murchinson woman? Is that what you mean?’

‘I almost did. And I’m almost sorry I didn’t.’

‘But she’s necessary, isn’t she?’

Jury drank his wine. ‘Yes, I guess so. She’s the best link to Baumann, although there are others: the men who patronized the place. She’ll give those names up if it means a deal.’

‘What are you going to do? Do you think you’ll need a solicitor or what?’

‘I’m not thinking that far ahead. I don’t have time for this nonsense about my job. I’m going back to Cornwall in the morning.’

She nodded. ‘Do you think this little girl is still alive, then?’

‘A few days ago, I didn’t, now I do.’ He didn’t know why; no new evidence had presented itself.

Phyllis looked at her plate. ‘You’re taking this case very personally, aren’t you?’

‘Maybe. If you got this involved with your work, what in hell would you do?’

She glanced around the room and back at him. ‘I guess I’d throw up.’

41

Very clever, Superintendent,’ said Viktor Baumann, lighter raised to his cigarette, clicked on and dropped into a vest pocket. He inhaled deeply. ‘But then I’ve heard you’re a clever man.’

Was Jury supposed to ask him how he knew that? Who Baumann’s contacts were? Perhaps even someone in the CID informing him? ‘Not by half, Mr. Baumann. After all, you’re still sitting at your desk, comfortably smoking.’

Baumann smiled a Byzantine smile that suggested layers upon layers of meaning–charm, sweetness, melt-in-the-mouth flakiness of a French pastry. Nothing in the smile to hint at the cold calculation running it. No wonder he drew women to him–the pretty Mary Scott, Lena Banks, and even the dreadful Irene Murchison.

Even, possibly, little girls, until it was too late.

‘No reason I shouldn’t be. Comfortable, I mean. Whoever this woman is you have in custody–’

‘The ‘whoever’ clearly knows you.’

‘Which is not the same as my knowing her, is it?’

‘Why would she have done what the business card told her to do if she didn’t know the name on it?’ Jury had taken it out and dropped it on the desk.

Baumann spread his arms wide, taking in the whole doubting universe. ‘I’ve no idea. Did the direction on the card–was it introduced by a ‘Dear’–what did you say her name was?’
 

Damn him. ‘Irene Murchison.’

‘Right. Well, did it say, ‘Dear Irene,’ et cetera?’ He leaned forward. ‘Mr. Jury, if that card was ever brought into evidence, you and the prosecution would be laughed out of court. In case you’ve forgotten the card’s original intention. My secretary Grace would certainly recall it. Shall we have her in?’

Jury gestured, and the hand moved away from the intercom.

‘What will you say, then, when Irene Murchison talks?’