For the Sake of Elena
Page 31
Havers’ Mini was sandwiched between the second panda car and Sheehan’s own vehicle, onto which he had slapped a temporary warning light. Behind him charged the scenes-of-crime van and behind that, an ambulance in the futile hope that the word body didn’t necessarily mean death.
They powered across the flyover that bridged the M11 and swung through the collection of cottages that comprised the tiny village of Madingley. Beyond it, they shot along a narrow lane. It was a farming area, an abrupt change from town to country just minutes away from Cambridge. Hedgerows characterised it—hawthorn, briar, and holly—marking the boundaries of fields newly planted with winter wheat.
They rounded a curve beyond which a tractor stood half on and half off the verge, its enormous wheels crusted with mud. Atop it sat a man in a bulky jacket with its collar turned up round his ears and his shoulders hunched against the wind and the cold. He waved them to a halt and hopped to the ground. A border collie that had been lying motionless at the rear wheel of the tractor got to its feet upon the man’s sharp command and came to his side.
“Over here,” the man said after introducing himself as Bob Jenkins and pointing out his home about a quarter mile away, set back from the road and surrounded by barn, outbuildings, and fields. “Shasta found her.”
Hearing his name, the dog pricked up his ears, gave one extremely disciplined wag of the tail, and followed his master about twenty feet beyond the tractor where a body lay in a tangle of weeds and bracken along the base of the hedge.
“Never seen anything like it,” Jenkins said. “I di’ know what the ruddy world’s comin’ to.” He pulled at his nose, which was scarlet from the cold, and squinted against the northeast wind. It held the fog at bay—as it had done on the previous day—but it brought along with it the frigid temperatures of the grey North Sea. A hedgerow offered little protection against it.
“Damn” was Sheehan’s only remark as he squatted by the body. Lynley and Havers joined him.
It was a girl, tall and slender, with a fall of hair the colour of beechwood. She was wearing a green sweatshirt, white shorts, athletic shoes, and rather grimy socks, the left one of which had become rucked round her ankle. She lay on her back, with her chin tilted up, her mouth open, her eyes glazed. And her torso was a mass of crimson broken by the dark tattooing of unburnt particles of gunpowder. A single glance was enough to tell all of them that the only possible use the ambulance might serve would be to convey the corpse to autopsy.
“You haven’t touched her?” Lynley asked Bob Jenkins.
The man looked horrified by the very thought. “Didn’t touch nothing,” he said. “Shasta here snuffed her, but he backed up quick enough, didn’t he, when he caught the smell of the powder. Not one for guns, is Shasta.”
“You heard no shots this morning?”
Jenkins shook his head. “I was working over the engine of the tractor early on. I had it going off and on, playing with the carburettor and making a bit of a row. If someone took her down then—” He jerked his head at the body but didn’t look at it. “I wouldn’t have heard.”
“What about the dog?”
Jenkins’ hand automatically went for the dog’s head which was inches away from his own left thigh. Shasta blinked, panted briefly, and accepted the caress with another single wag of his tail. “He did set to with a bit of barking,” Jenkins said. “I had the radio going over the engine noise and had to shout him down.”
“Do you remember what time this was?”
At first he shook his head. But then he lifted a gloved hand quickly—one finger skyward—as if an idea had suddenly struck him. “It was somewhere near half six.”
“You’re sure?”
“They were reading the news and I wanted to hear if the P.M.’s going to do something about this poll tax business.” His eyes shifted to the body and quickly away. “Girl could of been hit then, all right. But I have to tell that Shasta might of just been barking to bark. He does that some.”
Around them, the uniformed police were rolling out the crime scene tape and blocking off the lane as the scenes-of-crime team began unloading the van. The police photographer approached with his camera held before him like a shield. He looked a bit green under the eyes and round the mouth. He waited some feet away for the signal from Sheehan who was peering at the blood-soaked front of the dead girl’s sweatshirt.
“A shotgun,” he said. And then looking up, he shouted to the scenes-of-crime team, “Keep an eye out for the wad, you lot.” He rested on his thick haunches and shook his head. “This’s going to be worse than looking for dust in the desert.”
“Why?” Havers asked.
Sheehan cocked his head at her in surprise. Lynley said, “She’s a city dweller, Superintendent.” And then to Havers, “It’s pheasant season.”
Sheehan went on with, “Anyone wanting to have a bash at the pheasants is going to own a shotgun, Sergeant. The killings begin next week. It’s the time of year when every idiot with an itchy finger and a need to feel like some real blood sport’s just the way to get him back to his roots will be out blasting away at anything that moves. We’ll be seeing wounds every which way by the end of the month.”
“But not like this.”
“No. This was no accident.” He fumbled in his trouser pocket and brought out a wallet from which he extracted a credit card. “Two runners,” he said pensively. “Both of them women. Both of them tall, both fair, both long-haired.”
“You’re not thinking we’re looking at a serial killing?” Havers sounded a mixture of doubt and disappointment that the Cambridge superintendent might have reached such a conclusion.
Sheehan used the edge of his credit card to clean off a patch of dirt and leaves that clung to the front of the girl’s blood-soaked sweatshirt. Over the left breast the words Queens’ College, Cambridge were stencilled round the college coat of arms.
“You mean someone with a nasty little bent for bringing down fair-haired college runners?” Sheehan asked. “No. I don’t think so. Serial killers don’t vary their routines this much. The killing’s their signature. You know what I mean: I beat in another head with a brick, you coppers, are you any closer to finding me yet?” He cleaned off the credit card, wiped his fingers on a rust-coloured handkerchief, and pushed himself to his feet. “Shoot her, Graham,” he said over his shoulder, and the photographer came forward to do so. At that, the scenes-of-crime team began to move, as did the uniformed constables, beginning the slow process of examining every inch of the surrounding ground.
Bob Jenkins said, “Got to get in that field, if you’ve a mind to let me,” and tilted his chin to direct their attention to where he had been heading in the first place when his dog had come upon the body.
Perhaps three yards away from the dead girl, a break in the hedge revealed a gate giving access to the nearest field. Lynley eyed it for a moment as the crime scene people began their work.
“In a few minutes,” he said to the farmer, and added to Sheehan, “They’ll need to look for prints all along the verge, Superintendent. Footprints. Tyre prints from a car or a bike.”
“Right,” Sheehan said, and went to speak with his team.
Lynley and Havers walked to the gate. It was only wide enough to accommodate the tractor, and hemmed in on both sides by a heavy growth of hawthorn. They climbed carefully over. The ground beyond was soft, trodden, and rutted as it gave way to the field itself. But its consistency was crumbly and fragile, so although the imprints of feet were everywhere, nowhere did they leave an impression that was anything more than merely another indentation in the already choppy ground.
“Nothing decent,” Havers said as she scouted round the area. “But if it was a lying-in-wait—”
“Then the waiting had to be done right here,” Lynley concluded. He worked his eyes slowly over the ground, from one side of the gate to the other. When he saw what he was looking for—an indentation in the ground that didn’t fit with the rest—he said, “Havers.”
“Knee, leg, toe,” Lynley said. “The killer knelt here, hidden by the hedge, on one knee, resting the gun on the second bar of the gate. Waiting.”
“But how could anyone have known—”
“That she’d be running this way? The same way someone knew where to find Elena Weaver.”
Justine Weaver scraped a knife along the burnt edge of the toast, watching the resulting black ash speckle the clean surface of the kitchen sink like a fine deposit of powder. She tried to find a place inside her where compassion and understanding still resided, a place like a well from which she could drink deeply and somehow replenish what the events of the past eight months—and the last two days—had desiccated. But if a well-spring of empathy had ever existed at her core, it had long since dried up, leaving in its place the barren ground of resentment and despair. And nothing flowed from this.
They’ve lost their daughter, she told herself. They share a mutual grief. But those facts did not eliminate the wretchedness she had felt since Monday night, a replay of an earlier pain, like the same melody in a different key.
They’d come home together in silence yesterday, Anthony and his former wife. They’d been to see the police. They’d gone on to the funeral home. They’d chosen a coffin and made the arrangements, none of which they shared with her. It was only when she brought out the plates of thin sandwiches and cake, only when she had poured the tea, only when she had passed them each the lemon and the milk and the sugar that either of them spoke in anything other than weary monosyllables. And then it was Glyn who finally addressed her, choosing the moment and wielding the weapon, a superficially simple declaration that was skilfully honed by time and circumstance.
As she spoke, she kept her eyes on the sandwich plate which Justine was offering her and which she made no move to accept. “I’d prefer you to stay away from my daughter’s funeral, Justine.”
They were in the sitting room, gathered round the low coffee table. The artificial fire was lit, its flames lapping the false coals with a quiet hiss. The curtains were drawn. An electric clock whirred softly. It was such a sensible, civilised place to be.
At first Justine said nothing. She looked at her husband, waiting for him to voice a protest of some sort. But he was giving his attention to his teacup and saucer. A muscle pulled at the corner of his mouth.
He knew this was coming, she thought, and she said, “Anthony?”
“You had no real tie to Elena,” Glyn went on. Her voice was even, so extremely reasonable. “So I’d prefer you not to be there. I hope you understand.”
“Ten years as her stepmother,” Justine said.
“Please,” Glyn said. “As her father’s second wife.”
Justine set the plate down. She studied the neat array of sandwiches, noting how she’d assembled them to form a pattern. Egg salad, crab, fresh ham, cream cheese. Crusts neatly removed, every edge of the bread cut as if it were a perfect plane. Glyn went on.
“We’ll take her to London for the service, so you won’t have to do without Anthony for longer than a few hours. And then afterwards, you can get directly back to the business of your lives.”
Justine merely stared, trying and failing to summon a response.
Glyn continued, as if following a course she’d determined in advance. “We never knew for certain why Elena was born deaf. Has Anthony told you that? I suppose we could have had studies done—some sort of genetic thing, you know what I mean—but we didn’t bother.”
Anthony leaned forward, put his teacup on the coffee table. He kept his fingers on its saucer as if in the expectation that it would slide to the floor.
Justine said, “I don’t see that—”
“The reality is that you might produce a deaf baby as well, Justine, if there’s something wrong with Anthony’s genes. I thought I ought to mention the possibility. Are you equipped—emotionally, I mean—to deal with a handicapped child? Have you considered how a deaf child might put a spanner in the works of your career?”
Justine looked at her husband. He didn’t meet her eyes. One of his hands formed a loose fist on his thigh. She said, “Is this really necessary, Glyn?”
“I should think you’d find it helpful.” Glyn reached for her teacup. For a moment, she seemed to examine the rose on the china, and she turned the cup to the right, to the left, as if with the intention of admiring its design. “That’s that, then, isn’t it? Everything’s been said.” She replaced the cup and stood. “I won’t be wanting any dinner.” She left them alone.
Justine turned to her husband, waited for him to speak, and watched him sit motionless. He seemed to be disappearing into himself, bones, blood, and flesh disintegrating into the ashes and dust from which all men were formed. He has such small hands, she thought. And for the first time she considered the wide gold wedding band round his finger and the reason she had wanted him to have it—the largest, the widest, the brightest in the shop, the most capable of heralding the fact of their marriage.
“Is this what you want?” she finally asked him.
His eyelids looked caked, their skin stretched and sore. “What?”
“That I stay away from the funeral. Is this what you want, Anthony?”
“It has to be that way. Try to understand.”
“Understand? What?”
“That she’s not responsible for who she is right now. She has no control over what she says and does. It goes too deep with her, Justine. You’ve got to understand.”
“And stay away from the funeral.”
She saw the movement of resignation—a simple lifting and lowering of his fingers—and knew the response he would make before he made it. “I hurt her. I left her. I owe her this much. I owe both of them this much.”
“My God.”
“I’ve already talked to Terence Cuff about a memorial service Friday at St. Stephen’s Church. You’ll be part of that. All of Elena’s friends will be there.”
“And that’s it? That’s all? That’s your judgement of everything? Of our marriage? Of our life? Of my relationship with Elena?”
“This isn’t about you. You can’t take it to heart.”
“You didn’t even argue with her. You could have protested.”
He finally looked at her. “It’s the way it has to be.”
She said nothing more. She merely felt the hard core of her resentment take on added weight. Still, she held her tongue. Be sweet, Justine, she could hear her mother say over her need to rail like a shrew against her husband. Be a nice girl.
She put the sixth piece of toast into the rack and the rack itself along with boiled eggs and sausage onto a white wicker tray. Nice girls muster up compassion, she thought. Sweet girls forgive and forgive and forgive. Don’t think of the self. Go beyond the self. Find a need greater than your own and fill it. That’s the Christian way to live.
But she couldn’t do it. Into the scales upon which she weighed her behaviour, she put the useless hours that she’d given over to trying to forge a bond with Elena, the mornings on which she’d run at her side, the evenings she’d spent helping her write her essays, the endless Sunday afternoons she’d waited for father and daughter to return from a jaunt which Anthony had declared essential to his recapturing of Elena’s love and trust.
She carried the tray into the glassed-in morning room where her husband and his former wife were sitting at the wicker table. They had been picking at grapefruit wedges and corn flakes for nearly half an hour, and now, she supposed, they would do the same with the eggs, the sausage, and the toast.
She knew she ought to say, “You need to eat. Both of you,” and another Justine might have managed the seven words and made them sound
sincere. Instead, she said nothing. She sat in her accustomed place, with her back to the drive, across the table from her husband. She poured him coffee. He raised his head. He looked ten years older than he had two days ago.
Glyn said, “All this food. I can’t eat. It’s such a waste really,” and she didn’t lift her eyes from watching Justine tap off the top of her boiled egg. “Did you run this morning?” she asked, and when Justine didn’t reply, “I imagine you’ll want to start that up again soon. It’s important for a woman to keep working at her figure. Not a stretch-mark anywhere on you, is there?”
Justine stared down at the spoonful of tender white that she’d scooped from her egg. Every admonition from her past rose up to confront her, but they formed an insubstantial barrier that the previous night made easy to surmount. She said, “Elena was pregnant.” And then she looked up. “Eight weeks pregnant.”
Anthony’s face, she saw, went from drained to stricken. Glyn’s face offered a curiously satisfied smile.
“That Scotland Yard man was here yesterday afternoon,” Justine said. “He told me.”
“Pregnant?” Anthony repeated the word in a deadened voice.
“That’s what the autopsy showed.”
“But who…how…?” Anthony fumbled with a teaspoon. It slipped from his fingers and clattered on the floor.
“How?” Glyn gave a tittering laugh. “Oh, I’d think it was how babies usually get made.” She nodded at Justine. “What a moment of triumph for you, my dear.”
Anthony turned his head. The movement seemed sluggish, as if he were pulling against a great weight. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You think she doesn’t savour this moment? Just ask her if she already knew. Ask her if the information surprised her at all. In fact, you might ask her how she encouraged your daughter to have a man whenever she felt itchy.” Glyn leaned forward. “Because Elena told me all about it, Justine. About those heart-to-heart chats, about how she was supposed to take care of herself.”