What Men Say (31 page)

The Italian shrugged. “OK, please yourself,
va fanculo
” she muttered, and went back to folding a pair of peach satin cami-knickers.

“What Were You Doing In Paris? Holiday?”

Loretta, who had been staring out of the car window at the familiar flat countryside between Christmas Common and Oxford, barely moved her head. “Conference,” she said, hoping the Inspector would take the hint.

“In Paris? Where's the Police Federation meeting this year, Blady? Scarborough?”

He half turned from the front seat. “Don't know. Sorry, ma'am.”

Inspector Queen was silent for a moment but the approach of Oxford seemed to be making her nervous. She smoothed her skirt out over her knees and remarked: “I've often wondered what you
do
at these conferences, academics.”

“Discuss things.”

“But do you really do anything you couldn't do on the phone? Presumably you've all got computers and fax machines these days. I mean, who pays?”

“I do.”

“Not your college?”

This was absurd enough to jerk Loretta out of the
fearful speculation which had absorbed her for most of the journey from Heathrow. She imagined Bernard Shilling's face if she put in an expenses claim for attending a meeting of the
Fern Sap
editorial collective and replied, more sharply than she intended: “No, certainly not.” The car sped past a motorway sign giving advance warning of Exit Eight, the turn-off for Oxford, and her heart responded with a fast, jerky beat which left her slightly out of breath.

She reluctantly accepted that the cassette tape, with its incriminating fingerprints, belonged to Bridget. Sam was uninterested in pop music, he had never heard of k. d. lang and was politely bored when Loretta and Bridget reminisced one evening about bands they had seen in the early seventies—the Who, Led Zeppelin, Fairport Convention. In any case he had a portable CD player, Loretta had seen it at his flat in Norham Gardens, whereas Bridget quite often took her old Walkman to work. Loretta could easily picture her bumping down the cobbled street in front of St. Frideswide's in her Astra, singing along with Madonna as she turned into the small college car park and pressing the “eject” button so she could take the tape with her. It was harder to imagine Paula Wolf in the front seat of Bridget's car, fingering the plastic cassette case; Loretta's idea of the dead woman was based on the drawing which had appeared in the
Guardian,
that two-dimensional image in which life was so obviously extinct.

There were phones at intervals along the A34; Loretta had used one to ring Joe Lunderius just after Christmas when she was held up by road works on the way home from a two-day conference at Southampton University. Paula
could
have phoned Thebes Farm from there, after she got out of the blue van, although there was no obvious reason why she should have tried Sam's
home number rather than his office. Then it occurred to Loretta that Paula might have mixed up the two numbers; a foreigner, particularly one who had just had an unpleasant experience, would not necessarily recognize the slight difference between the two codes. If Paula was distressed, incoherent even, it might explain Bridget's willingness to go and pick her up without fully understanding who she was, or her connection with Sam. Loretta had no sooner thought of this explanation than she recoiled from it, unconsciously lifting one of her hands in a gesture of rejection. She did not believe Sam's version of events for a minute, it was a malicious fiction designed to deflect suspicion from the more obvious suspect, himself,
and
punish Bridget for her deceit over the baby.

In that case, nagged a dissident voice, why had Bridget asked Loretta to supply her with an alibi for the very Thursday afternoon Paula Wolf arrived in England? Loretta recalled Bridget's anger when she refused to lie on her behalf, to say they had met for lunch and walked on Port Meadow. There was also, insisted the unwelcome voice, the small matter of the computer log; she had forgotten the technical term Tracey used, but it showed Sam quietly working in his office throughout the afternoon. If it wasn't Bridget who went to Paula's rescue, who was it?

The big car slowed on the approach to the A40, waiting for a gap in the busy evening traffic. Loretta nibbled her lower lip, picking at a piece of loose skin until it peeled away and left a tender patch. She thought about Bridget's reaction to the discovery of the body, her spectacular bout of vomiting in the garden at Thebes Farm, and told herself such a display could not have been put on; Bridget was a hopeless actress, a creature of impulse whose responses sometimes embarrassed
and even irritated her friends. As for the cassette tape, such a small, portable object hardly proved anything—it could have been lying around at Thebes Farm when Paula arrived, innocently picked up by Bridget a few days later, after the murder.

“Dr. Lawson?” Inspector Queen touched her lightly on the arm as they approached the Headington roundabout. “What's the best route to Jericho? Marston Ferry Road?”

“Mmm.” Loretta glanced at her watch and was astonished to discover it was only twenty past seven; they had done the journey in record time. Several years ago, when she lived in Islington, she had learned a relaxation technique at a yoga class which she now tried to put into practice, unsuccessfully attempting to regulate her breathing.

“Your neighbor comes in to feed the cat, is that right?”

“What?”

“Mrs.—the woman two doors down.”

“Mrs. Mason.”

“She looks after him when you go away, that's very convenient.”

They passed the Cherweli School on their right, pulling out to overtake a slow-moving van.

“I prefer dogs myself,” Inspector Queen prattled on as they reached the junction with Banbury Road. “Big ones like Labradors, I haven't got any time for those yappy little things. Though with the hours I have to work . . . My sister's got a cat, a big tabby. What color's yours?”

“Gray.” Loretta didn't bother to point out that the Inspector had almost fallen over Bertie on the stairs when she came to the house the previous week.

“And the canal isn't a problem? I suppose cats don't like water, do they?”

“No.”

“One of our divers got Weil's disease from the canal. You know, that thing you get from rat's urine. He was off for months.”

The lights changed and they crossed Banbury Road. Loretta glanced north at the solid Edwardian villas leading up to the Summertown shops; everything looked so ordinary, a young Chinese woman in jeans crossing the road, an elderly woman carrying a Yorkshire terrier, the yappy kind of dog Inspector Queen had just disparaged. Loretta's fingers closed on the door handle, responding to her unformed wish to escape from the car, and the Inspector gave her a sharp look.

“Left here?” said the driver at the end of Moreton Road, only the second time he had spoken since they all got into the white Rover.

“Yes. And then right into Polstead Road or St. Margaret's, it doesn't matter which.” Loretta shrank into her corner, trying to remember whether the police needed a warrant to search a house. If she made enough noise opening the front door, made it clear she was not alone, maybe Bridget would take the hint and hide—although it was hard to imagine a pregnant woman squeezing under a bed or concealing herself in the narrow wardrobe in the spare bedroom.

“Sorry?” she said, turning her head.

“I asked how long you've lived there, Southmoor Road.”

“Oh, three years.”

“And you don't mind commuting to London?”

“I don't go every day. Not this one,” she added hastily, seeing that the driver was about to take the first turn into Southmoor Road, “there's a one-way system.”
Without acknowledging her advice he changed up a gear, drove on a hundred yards and turned into Southmoor Place. The short road ended in a T-junction and the car halted while the driver peered at a carelessly parked Volvo which overhung the junction by a yard.

“The way people park,” said Inspector Queen, and the car inched round the corner, steering a narrow course between the Volvo and an old Citroeë parked opposite. The driver cruised along the street, keeping an eye on the numbers, and bumped up onto the pavement behind Loretta's green Golf.

“That's yours, isn't it? You're lucky it hasn't been pinched, they love those GTIs at Blackbird Leys.”

Loretta ignored her, too busy trying to spot Bridget's maroon car. As the engine died she gave up looking and leaped out, her keys already in her hand as she hurried round the Rover to her front gate. She heard the Inspector call her name, glanced up the street to see a uniformed policewoman getting out of a parked car, and bolted up the path, throwing open the front door and dropping her carpetbag as she got inside.

“Bridget,” she called in as loud a whisper as she dared, “Bridget, where are you?” She looked fearfully back at the front door, wondering why the detectives hadn't caught up with her, and saw that her abandoned carpetbag was preventing them from opening the front door.

“Hang on, ma'am, something's in the way,” said Blady's voice and Loretta took advantage of the delay to move further down the hall, straining for the least sound of occupation on the upper or lower floors. She heard nothing, neither footsteps nor the creak of a floor-board, and she almost cried out in the hope that Bridget had gone out, that what she was listening to was the eerie silence of an empty house.

“Dr. Lawson? What's going on? What's the hurry?” Inspector Queen strode down the hall to confront Loretta, angry and suspicious.

She turned. “Urn, nothing. The answering machine's in there.” She pointed through the open door of her study, then swung round, her heart pounding, as she heard a noise from the kitchen. Loretta and the Inspector stood very still for half a minute, their eyes fixed on the bend in the stairs, and Loretta almost laughed out loud when the gray cat appeared, tail high and grumbling volubly about her three-day absence.

“Bertie.” Loretta scooped him up, held his sturdy body against her chest and gently unhooked his claws from the thin fabric of her shirt. She said inanely: “Who's a good boy then?”

Inspector Queen rolled her eyes upwards and stepped into Loretta's study. “In here, you say?”

Loretta followed, carrying the cat. She was aware that Blady was behind her, close enough to feel his breath on her neck, and she moved swiftly out of range, hurrying across the room to her desk where the green message light blinked at her in the artificial dusk created by the lowered blind. The cat squirmed and she allowed him to slip from her arms, chewing her lip again as she leaned forward to raise the blind. The evening sun filled the room with a rosy glow but Loretta was in no mood to admire the effect, worried now in case Bridget had phoned with a message about her current whereabouts.

“Ready?” she asked, turning to the Inspector, and was just in time to see Blady slip out of the room. She sighed, thinking there was little point in challenging the legality of the search, and pressed the “message play” button on the answering machine. From the time the tape took to rewind she guessed there were half a dozen
messages on the machine, although the first two or three should be safe enough, left over from earlier in the week. The machine beeped and a deep, slightly familiar American voice began to speak.

“Loretta, this is Dolores del Negro calling from Berkeley on Monday morning. I guess it's Monday evening your time. I got your message Friday and I was hoping to catch up with you today. Maybe if I leave my home number you can call me there. Talk to you soon.”

Inspector Queen frowned and tapped her foot as the American woman dictated a long number, hesitated and then repeated her work number in case Loretta did not have it to hand.

The machine beeped and someone coughed into the tape. “Hello, Laura, it's Jenny, just ringing to say happy birthday. I did get you a card but Anthea's got chicken pox and now Kate's starting it as well, you know how it is. I expect you're out having a lovely time, and if I don't hear from you I'll try again later in the week. Bye.”

“My sister,” Loretta explained as Jenny finished speaking.

“Hello? Hello? This is L. D. Taylor, electrical repairs . . . your radio's ready if you'd like to collect it. It's half past two on Tuesday and if you get this message today we're open till five thirty. Thanking you.”

“Loretta?” Christopher's voice, very agitated. “I know you're not home, I thought you might have left your number in Paris . . . Could you wait a moment, please, can't you see I'm talking? Sorry, Loretta, all hell's broken loose here—the cops just took Sam away, they said something about
murder.
OK, in a
moment
—I have to go, Loretta, call me as soon as you get home.”

Inspector Queen said: “News travels fast.”

The tape wound on. “Hi, er . . . this is John Tracey.
Listen, Loretta, I'm supposed to be getting a flight to Moscow but those wankers at the embassy are messing me around about a visa . . . I just got a call from a freelance in Oxford and your mate's husband, Boris Becker or whatever he calls himself, apparently he's been arrested. I called the cops and all they'll say is he's helping with inquiries but it doesn't look good. Um, it's Wednesday morning by the way, eleven . . . ten past twelve.”

The answering machine beeped and Loretta closed her eyes, half expecting to hear Bridget's voice. Instead she heard Tracey again, more hesitant this time: “Loretta, it's me, I'm still at the office. I called him back, the freelance, and this DC he knows says they've got half of CID looking for Bridget. Christ, I wish you wouldn't disappear like this—ring me as soon as you get in, OK? I don't want you doing anything stupid. The Moscow trip's off, by the way, you can get me at the office or I'll call you later.” The machine beeped twice and began to rewind.