This Body of Death

by Elizabeth George

  She said, “Darling, what’s going on? Who’s Ringo? What letters are you talking about? Have those police come to see you again today? Or, at heart, is this just about me? Because if it is, I had no idea …I didn’t intend harm. It only seemed to me that if we’re to be together—I mean permanently—then I need to get used to the New Forest animals. Don’t I? The horses are part of your life. They’re part of the holding. I can’t avoid them forever.”

  It was, if not an olive branch, then at least a fork in the road that he could take if he wanted to take it. He thought about the choices that lay ahead before he finally said, “If you wanted to get used to them, I would have helped you.”

  “I know that. But then it wouldn’t have been a surprise. And that’s what I wanted it to be.” Some small tension seemed to release within her before she went on. “I’m sorry if I’ve somehow overstepped the mark. I didn’t think it would actually hurt anything. Look. Will you watch?” She took the map and unfolded it. She said, “Will you let me show you, Gordon?”

  She waited for his nod. When he gave it, she turned from him. She approached the trough slowly, the map held at her side. The ponies were drinking but they raised their heads warily. They were wild, after all, and meant to remain so.

  Next to him, Tess whined for attention, and he grasped her collar. Near the trough, Gina raised the map. She waved it at the ponies, and cried, “Shoo, horse!” Tess gave a sharp bark as the ponies wheeled round and trotted to the far side of the paddock.

  Gina turned back to him. She said nothing. Nor did he. It was another point of choice for him, but there were so many now, so many choices and so many paths and every day there seemed to be more. One wrong move was all it would take, and he knew that better than anything.

  She came back to him. When she was outside the paddock once again, he released his hold on the dog and Tess bounded to Gina. A moment for another caress and the retriever was off in the direction of the barn, loping for the shade and her water dish.

  Gina stood before him. As was his habit, he was wearing his dark glasses still, and she reached up and removed them, saying, “Let me see your eyes.”

  “The light,” he said, although this wasn’t quite the truth, and, “I don’t like to be without them,” which was.

  She said, “Gordon, can you be easy? Will you let me help you let everything go?”

  He felt tight from head to foot, held in a vice of his own creation. “I can’t.”

  “You can,” she said. “Let me, my darling.”

  And the miracle of Gina was that how he had been with her moments before did not matter to her. She was now incarnate. The past was the past.

  She slid one hand up his chest and her arm round his neck. She drew him near her while her other hand slid down and down in order to make him hard.

  “Let me help you let everything go,” she repeated, this time close and against his mouth. “Let me, darling.”

  He groaned helplessly and then he chose. He closed the remaining space between them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “HE’S CALLED YUKIO MATSUMOTO,” ISABELLE ARDERY TOLD Lynley when he walked into her office. “His brother saw the e-fit and phoned in.” She fingered through some paperwork on her desk.

  Lynley said, “Hiro Matsumoto?”

  She looked up. “That’s the brother. D’you know him?”

  “I know of him. He’s a cellist.”

  “In a London orchestra?”

  “No. He’s a soloist.”

  “Well known?”

  “If you follow classical music.”

  “Which you do, I take it?” She sounded marginally piqued, as if he’d been intent upon demonstrating knowledge that she considered both arcane and offensive. She also seemed on edge. Lynley wondered if this had to do with whatever she might be thinking about his meeting with Hillier. He wanted to tell her to have no fear on that score. While he and Hillier had reached a point of personal rapprochement after Helen’s death, he had a feeling it wouldn’t last and soon enough they’d be back on their previous footing, which was at each other’s throats.

  He said, “I’ve heard him play. If, indeed, that’s the Hiro Matsumoto who phoned you.”

  “I can’t think there’re two blokes with that name, and anyway, he wouldn’t come to the Yard. He said he’d speak to us at his solicitor’s office. Some backing and forthing over that and we compromised with the bar at the Milestone Hotel. Not far from the Albert Hall. Do you know it?”

  “It can’t be difficult to find,” he said. “But why not at his solicitor’s office?”

  “I don’t like the image of cap in hand.” She looked at her watch. “Ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the car.” She tossed him her keys.

  It was actually fifteen minutes later when she joined him. In the closer confines of the car, she smelled of mint. “Right,” she said as they headed up the ramp. “Tell me, Thomas.”

  He glanced at her. “What?”

  “Don’t be coy. Did Hillier order you to watch me and give him reports?”

  Lynley smiled to himself. “Not in so many words.”

  “But it was about me, wasn’t it, this meeting with Sir David.”

  At the street he braked and looked in her direction. “You know, in some situations that conclusion would smack of narcissism. The appropriate response would be, ‘The world is not all about you, guv.’”

  “Isabelle,” she said.

  “Guv,” he repeated.

  “Oh bother, Thomas. I don’t intend to let that go. The Isabelle bit. As to the other, are you going to tell me or shall I just assume? I want loyalists working for me, by the way. You’ll have to choose sides.”

  “And if I don’t wish to?”

  “Out on your handsome ear. You’ll be back to traffic warden in the blink of an eye.”

  “I was never a traffic warden in the first place, guv.”

  “Isabelle. And you damn well know what I mean, behind those impeccable manners of yours.”

  He pulled out into Broadway and considered his route. He settled on making for Birdcage Walk and weaving over to Kensington from there.

  The Milestone Hotel was one of the many boutique establishments that had been springing up round town in the last few years. Fashioned from one of the distinguished redbrick mansions that faced Kensington Gardens and the palace, it was oaken, quiet, and discreet, an oasis from the bustle of High Street Kensington, not far from the hotel’s front door. It was also air-conditioned, a real blessing.

  The hotel’s staff wore expensive uniforms and spoke in the hushed voices of people at a religious service. The moment that Lynley and Isabelle Ardery walked into the place, they were approached by a pleasant concierge who asked if he could be of assistance to them.

  They wanted the bar, Ardery told him. She was brisk and official. Where is it? she asked.

  The man’s moment of hesitation was something Lynley recognised as an indication of a disapproval that he wouldn’t voice. For all he knew, she was a hotel inspector or someone getting ready to write about the Milestone in one of the myriad guides to London. It would serve everyone’s interests if he cooperated as blandly as possible with only a minuscule display of his judgment of her manners. He said, “Of course, madam,” and he took them personally to the bar, which turned out to be an intimate setting for a colloquy.

  Before he left them, Isabelle asked him to fetch the bartender and when that individual arrived, she ordered a vodka and tonic. To Lynley’s carefully expressionless face, she said, “Are you going to tell me about Sir David or not,” which surprised him as he thought she’d likely remark about the drink.

  “There’s little to report. He’s interested in filling the position soon. It’s been too long without someone permanently in Webberly’s place. You’ve a good shot at it as—”

  “As long as I keep my nose clean, wear tights to the office, don’t ruffle anyone’s feathers, and walk the straight and narrow,” she said. “Which I s
uppose includes not having a vodka and tonic during working hours, whatever the temperature of the day.”

  “I was going to say ‘as far as I can tell,’” he told her. He’d ordered a mineral water for himself.

  She narrowed her eyes at him and frowned at the bottle of Pellegrino when it arrived. “You disapprove of me, don’t you?” she said. “Will you tell Sir David?”

  “That I disapprove? I don’t, actually.”

  “Not even of the fact that I have the occasional drink on duty? I’m not a lush, Thomas.”

  “Guv, you’ve no need to explain yourself to me. And as to the rest, I’m not eager to become Hillier’s snout. He knows that.”

  “But your opinion counts with him.”

  “I can’t think why. If it does now, it never did before.”

  The sound of quiet conversation came in their direction, and in a moment two people entered the room. Lynley recognised the cellist at once. His companion was an attractive Asian woman in a smartly tailored suit and stiletto heels that clicked like whip cracks against the floor.

  She glanced at Lynley but spoke to Ardery. “Superintendent?” she said. At Ardery’s nod, she introduced herself as Zaynab Bourne. “And this is Mr. Matsumoto,” she told them.

  Hiro Matsumoto bent fractionally from the waist although he also extended his hand. He gave a firm handshake and murmured a conventional greeting. He had, Lynley thought, a quite pleasant face. Behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, his eyes appeared kind. For an international celebrity in the world of classical music, he seemed inordinately humble as well, asking politely for a cup of tea. Green tea if they had it, he said. If not, black tea would do. He spoke without an apparent accent. Lynley recalled that he’d been born in Kyoto, but he’d studied and played abroad for many years.

  He was appearing now at the Albert Hall, he said. He was in London for only a fortnight, also teaching a master class at the music college. It was purest chance that he’d seen the e-fit—which he called the artist’s rendition—of his brother in the newspaper and also on the television news.

  “Please believe me,” Hiro Matsumoto said quietly, “when I assure you that Yukio did not kill this woman the papers are speaking of. He could not have done so.”

  “Why?” Ardery said. “He was in the vicinity—we’ve a witness to that—and he seems to have been running from the scene.”

  Matsumoto looked pained. “There will be an explanation. Whatever else he might be, whatever else he does, my brother Yukio is not a killer.”

  Zaynab Bourne said as if to explain, “Mr. Matsumoto’s younger brother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, Superintendent. Unfortunately, he won’t take medication. But he’s never been in trouble with the police since he first came to London—if you check your records you’ll find this is true—and he leads a quiet life in general. My client”—with a brief, proprietary touch on Hiro Matsumoto’s arm—“is identifying him so that you can concentrate your efforts elsewhere, where they belong.”

  “That may be the case—the schizophrenia bit,” Ardery said, “but as he was seen running from the area of a murder and as some of his clothing appeared to have been removed and was balled up—”

  “It’s been hot weather,” the solicitor cut in.

  “—he’s going to have to be questioned. So if you know where he is, Mr. Matsumoto, you do need to tell us.”

  The cellist hesitated. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and used it on his glasses. Unshielded by them, his face looked quite young. He was in his late forties, Lynley knew, but he could have passed for a man fifteen years younger.

  He said, “First, I must explain to you.”

  Ardery looked as if the last thing she wanted was an explanation for anything, but Lynley himself was curious. As secondary officer to Ardery, it wasn’t his place but still he said, “Yes?”

  His brother was a gifted musician, Hiro Matsumoto said. They were a musical family, and the three of them—there was also a sister who was a flautist in Philadelphia—had all been given instruments as children. They were expected to learn, to practise long and hard, to play well, and to excel. Towards this end they were educated in music at great cost to their parents and at personal sacrifice of them all.

  “Obviously,” he said, “there is not a normal childhood when one has this sort of …focus.” He chose the last word carefully. “In the end, I went to Juilliard, Miyoshi studied in Paris, and Yukio came to London. He was fine at first. There was no indication that anything was wrong. It was only later that the illness appeared. And because of this—because it happened in the midst of his studies—our father believed he was malingering. Out of his depth, perhaps, and unable to admit it or to cope with it. This was not the case, of course. He was seriously ill. But in our culture and in our family—” Matsumoto had continued polishing his glasses as he spoke, but now he paused, put them on, and adjusted them carefully on his nose. “Our father is not a bad man. But his beliefs are firm, and he could not be convinced that Yukio needed more than merely a good talking to. He came here from Kyoto. He made his wishes known to Yukio. He gave him instructions, and he expected them to be followed. Since his instructions had always been obeyed, he thought he’d done enough. And at first it seemed so. Yukio drove himself hard, but the illness …This is not something you can wish away or work away. He had a collapse, he left the college, and he simply disappeared. For ten years he was lost to us. When we located him, we wanted to help him, but he would not be forced. His fears are too great. He distrusts the medicines. He has a terror of hospitals. He manages to survive on his music, and my sister and I do what we can to watch over him when we come to London.”

  “And do you now know where he is? Exactly where he is?”

  Matsumoto looked to his solicitor. Zaynab Bourne took up the thread of the conversation. “I hope Mr. Matsumoto has made it clear that his brother is ill. He wants an assurance that nothing will be done that might frighten him. He understands that Yukio will need to be questioned, but he insists that your approach be cautious and that any interview be conducted in my presence and in the presence of a mental health professional. He also insists upon your acknowledgement and assurance that, as his brother is someone diagnosed with untreated paranoid schizophrenia, his words—whatever they might be once you speak to him—can hardly be used against him.”

  Lynley glanced at Ardery. She had her hands clasped round her vodka and tonic, and her fingers tapped against the cool sides of the glass. She’d drunk most of it during their conversation, and now she drained the rest. She said, “I acknowledge that we’ll take care. You’ll be there. A specialist will be there. The Pope, the Home Secretary, and the Prime Minister will be there if you want it. You’ll have as many witnesses as you like if that’s your pleasure, but if he admits to murder, he’s going to be charged.”

  “He’s seriously ill,” the solicitor said.

  “And we have a legal system that will make that determination.”

  There was a little silence as the cellist and his solicitor thought this over. Ardery leaned back in her chair. Lynley waited for her to remind them that they were at the moment sheltering someone who could be a material witness to a crime or, worse, the actual killer. But she didn’t play that card and she looked as if she knew she didn’t need to.

  Instead she said, “There’s a simple reality you must face, Mr. Matsumoto. If you don’t give your brother up to us, someone else will eventually.”

  Another silence before Hiro Matsumoto spoke. He looked so pained that Lynley felt a powerful surge of compassion for him, a surge so strong that he wondered if he was actually meant to do police work at this juncture in his life. The whole point was to manoeuvre people into a corner. Ardery was perfectly willing to do this, he could see, but he thought he himself might not have the stomach for it any longer.

  Matsumoto said quietly, “He is in Covent Garden. He plays his violin there, as a busker, for money.” He dropped his head, as if the admission were somehow a humili
ation, as perhaps it was.

  Ardery rose. She said, “Thank you. I have no intention of frightening him.” And to his solicitor she went on with, “When we have him in custody, I’ll ring you and tell you where he is. We won’t speak to him until you’re there. Contact whatever mental health expert you need and bring her along.”

  “I will want to see him,” Hiro Matsumoto said.

  “Of course. We’ll arrange that as well.” She gave him a nod and indicated to Lynley that they needed to be off.

  Lynley said to the cellist, “You’ve done the right thing, Mr. Matsumoto. I know it wasn’t easy.” He found he wanted to go on, forging a fellowship with the man because his own brother had in the past been deeply troubled. But Peter Lynley’s difficulties with both alcohol and drugs were insignificant compared to this, so he said nothing else.

  ISABELLE MADE THE phone call once they were on the pavement in front of the hotel, heading back to her car. They had their man, she told DI Hale brusquely. Get over to Covent Garden at once and take a team with you. Five blokes should do it. Fan out when you get there, look for a middle-aged Japanese man sawing away on a violin. Box him in. Do not approach him. He’s barking mad and just as dangerous. Phone me with his exact location. I’m on my way.

  She snapped her phone off and turned to Lynley. “Let’s pick up the miserable shite.”

  He looked surprised or taken aback or something that she couldn’t quite make out. She said, “This bloke is very likely a killer, Thomas.”

  “Right, guv.” He spoke politely.

  She said, “What? I’ll give them their bloody psycho-whatever-they-want-kind-of-expert and I’ll not say a word to him till Ms. Stiletto Heels is sitting in his lap, if necessary. But I’m not about to risk his getting away from us when we’ve finally got him.”