Playing for the Ashes

by Elizabeth George

  From across the room, Jeannie could smell him. She wondered when it was that he had last washed. She could even smell his breath, foetid with the smoke of his cigarettes.

  “He had pictures of you kids,” she said. “You remember how he came to collect them, don’t you? He put them in frames but the frames were wrong. Too big or too small. Mostly too big so Shar cut up paper to fill in the empty part. You helped. You chose the ones of yourself that you wanted him to have.”

  “Yeah? Well, I was a mutt then, wasn’t I? Snot nosed and smarmy. Hoping Dad’d want us back if I licked his shoes good enough. Perishing joke, that is. What a rotter. I’m glad—”

  “I don’t believe that, Jim.”

  “Why? What’s it to you, Mum?” His question was tense. He repeated it and added, “You sorry he’s gone?”

  “He was in a bad patch. He was trying to work things out in his head.”

  “Yeah. Aren’t we all? Only we don’t do our head working while we roger some slag, do we?”

  She was glad for the dark. It hid and protected. But shadows worked both ways. While he couldn’t clearly see her and thus couldn’t know how his words were like nasty little fish hooks digging into her cheeks, she couldn’t see him either, not the way a mother needs to see her son when there’s a question to be asked and just about everything in the mother’s life worth living rides on the answer he gives her.

  But she couldn’t ask it, so she asked another. “What’re you trying to say?”

  “I knew. All ’bout Dad. All ’bout blondie-from-a-bottle. All ’bout the great soul searching Dad was supposably doing while he humped her like a goat. Finding himself. What a two-faced turd.”

  “What he did with—” Jeannie couldn’t say the name, not to her son. Affirming what he’d said by putting more into words was too much to ask of herself at the moment. She steadied herself by putting her hands into the pockets of her housecoat. Her right hand found a wadded tissue, her left a comb with missing teeth. “That had nothing to do with you, Jimmy. That was me and Dad. He loved you like always. Shar and Stan as well.”

  “Which is why we went on the river like he promised, right, Mum? We hired that cabin cruiser like he always said and sailed up the Thames. Saw the locks. Saw the swans. Stopped at Hampton Court and ran in the maze. Even waved at the Queen who was standing on the bridge in Windsor, just waiting for us to cruise by and doff our hats.”

  “He meant to take you on the river. You mustn’t think he’d forgotten.”

  “And Henley Regatta. We saw that as well, didn’t we? All tarted up in our dress-up clothes. With a hamper crammed with our favourite eats. Chips for Stan. Cocoa Pops for Shar. McDonald’s for me. And when we were through, we went on the big birthday treat—Greek islands, the boat, just me and Dad.”

  “Jim, he needed to settle his mind. We’d been together since we was kids, Dad and me. He needed time to know if he wanted to go on. But to go on with me, with me, not with you. With you kids nothing was changed for Dad.”

  “Oh right, Mum. Nothing. And wouldn’t she of been chuffed to have us lot hanging ’bout. There’d be Stan wanking in her spare room at the weekends and Shar pinning up bird pictures on her wallpaper and me getting motor grease on her rugs. She would of been dead keen to have us as step-kids. ’S matter of fact, I can’t think she didn’t tell Dad to bugger off till he guaranteed she’d get us as part of the bargain.” He kicked off his Doc Martens. They hit the floor with a thud. He plumped up his pillow and leaned against the bed’s headboard where he put his face into deepest shadow. “She must be in a real state right now, blondie-from-a-bottle. What you think, Mum? Dad’s been chopped and that’s too bad, isn’t it, ’cause she can’t have it off with him whenever she’d like. But the worst of the worst is that she don’t get us as her step-kids now. And I bet she’s real cut up ’bout that.” He snickered quietly.

  The sound sent a quiver the length of Jeannie’s spine. Her left fingers sought the comb in her pocket and sank into the spaces where the teeth were missing. “Jimmy,” she said, “I got something to ask you.”

  “Ask away, Mum. Ask anything. But I haven’t rogered her, if that’s what you want to know. Dad wasn’t a bloke to share the goods.”

  “You knew who she was.”

  “Maybe I did.”

  Her right hand grasped the tissue. She began to ball it into pellets in her pocket. She didn’t want to know the answer because she knew it already. Still she asked the question. “When he cancelled the boat trip, what did he tell you? Jim, tell me. What did he say?”

  Jimmy’s hand slithered out of the shadows. It reached for something next to the play skull. A flare followed a sound like ssst, and he was holding a lit match next to his pallid face. He kept his eyes on hers as the match burnt down. When the flame licked his fingers, he didn’t wince. Nor did he answer.

  Lynley finally found a spot in Sumner Place. Parking karma, Sergeant Havers would have called it. He wasn’t so sure. He’d spent ten minutes cruising up and down the Fulham Road, circling South Kensington Station, and getting more acquainted than he would ever have dreamed possible with the restored Michelin building at Brompton Cross. He was about to give up and go home when he made a final pass into Sumner Place just in time to see an antique Morgan vacating a spot not twenty yards from where he was heading: Onslow Square.

  The early morning was fine, dew-cool silence interrupted by the occasional whoosh of a vehicle on Old Brompton Road. He walked down Sumner Place, crossed near a small chapel at the bottom of the street, and made his way into Onslow Square.

  All the lights save one were out in Helen’s flat. She’d kept a lamp burning in the drawing room, just inside the small balcony that overlooked the square. He smiled when he saw it. Helen knew him better than he knew himself.

  He went inside, climbed the stairs, let himself into the flat. She’d been reading before she had fallen asleep, he saw, because a book was open on the bedcovers, face down. He picked it up, tried and failed to read the title in the room’s near darkness, set it on the bedside table, and used her gold bracelet to mark the page. He studied her.

  She lay on her side, right hand beneath her cheek, lashes dark against her skin. Her lips were pursed, as if her dreams required concentration. A swirl of her hair curved from her ear to the corner of her mouth and when he brushed it off her face, she stirred but didn’t wake. He smiled at this. She was the soundest sleeper he had ever known.

  “Someone could break in, cart off all your belongings, and you’d never know,” he’d said to her in complete exasperation when her sleep of the dead confronted his endless toss and turn of the quick. “For God’s sake, Helen, there’s something damned unhealthy about it. You don’t fall asleep so much as lose consciousness. I think you ought to see a specialist about the problem.”

  She laughed and patted his cheek. “It’s the benefit of having a completely uncluttered conscience, Tommy.”

  “Damn little good that’ll do you if the building goes up in flames some night. You’d even sleep through the smoke alarm, wouldn’t you?”

  “Probably. What a ghastly thought.” She looked momentarily sombre, then brightened with, “Ah. But you wouldn’t, would you? Which does suggest that I ought to consider keeping you around.”

  “And do you?”

  “What?”

  “Consider it.”

  “More than you think.”

  “So?”

  “So we ought to have dinner. I’ve some perfectly lovely chicken. New potatoes. Haricots verts. A Pinot grigio to swill.”

  “You’ve cooked dinner?” This was a change, indeed. Sweet vision of domesticity, he thought.

  “I?” Helen laughed. “Heavens, Tommy, none of it’s cooked. Oh, I looked and looked through a book at Simon’s. Deborah even pointed out one or two recipes that didn’t appear likely to tax my limited culinary talents. But it all seemed so complicated.”

  “It’s only chicken.”

  “Yes, but the recipe asked me t
o dredge it. To dredge, for heaven’s sake. Isn’t that what they do in the fens? Aren’t they always dredging the canals or something? How on earth does one go about doing that to a chicken?”

  “Your imagination didn’t tell you?”

  “I don’t even want to repeat what my imagination suggested about dredging. Your appetite would be forever destroyed.”

  “Which might not be a bad idea if I have expectations of eating anytime soon.”

  “You’re disappointed. I’ve disappointed you. I’m sorry, darling. I’m utterly useless. Can’t cook. Can’t sew. Can’t play the piano. No talent for sketching. Can’t carry a tune.”

  “You’re not auditioning for a role in a Jane Austen novel.”

  “Fall asleep at the symphony. Have nothing intelligent to say about Shakespeare or Pinter or Shaw. Thought Simone de Beauvoir was something to drink. Why do you put up with me?”

  That was the question, all right. He had no answer.

  “We’re a pair, Helen,” he said quietly into her sleep. “We’re alpha and omega. We’re positive and negative. We’re a match made in heaven.”

  He took the small jewel box from his jacket pocket and set it on top of the novel on the bedside table. Because, after all, tonight was the night. Make the moment completely memorable, he’d thought. Make it shout romance. Do it with roses, candles, caviar, champagne. Have background music. Seal it with a kiss.

  Only the last option was available to him. He sat on the edge of the bed and touched his lips to her cheek. She stirred, frowning. She turned onto her back. He kissed her mouth.

  “Coming to bed?” she murmured, her eyes still closed.

  “How do you know it’s me? Or is that an invitation you’d extend to anyone who showed up in your bedroom at two in the morning?”

  She smiled. “Only if he shows promise.”

  “I see.”

  She opened her eyes. Dark like her hair, in contrast with her skin, they made her look like the night. She was shadows and moonlight. “How was it?” she asked softly.

  “Complicated,” he said. “A cricketer. From the England team.”

  “Cricket,” she murmured. “That ghastly game. Who can ever make sense of it?”

  “Fortunately, that won’t be a requirement of the case.”

  Her eyes drifted closed. “Come to bed, then. I miss you snoring in my ear.”

  “Do I snore?”

  “No one’s ever complained about it before?”

  “No. And I should think…” He saw the trap when her lips slowly curved in a smile. “You’re supposed to be more than half asleep, Helen.”

  “I am. I am. So should you be. Come to bed, darling.”

  “Despite—”

  “Your chequered past. Yes. I love you. Come to bed and keep me warm.”

  “It’s not cold.”

  “We’ll pretend.”

  He lifted her hand, kissed the palm, curved the fingers round his. Her grasp was loose. She was falling back asleep. “Can’t,” he said. “I’ve got to be up too early.”

  “Pooh,” she murmured. “You can set the alarm.”

  “I wouldn’t want to,” he said. “You distract me too much.”

  “That doesn’t bode well for our future then, does it?”

  “Have we a future?”

  “You know we do.”

  He kissed her fingers and slipped her hand beneath the covers. In a reflex reaction, she turned on her side once again. “Sleep well,” he said.

  “Hmmm. Will. Yes.”

  He kissed her temple, rose, and headed for the door.

  “Tommy?” It was little more than a mumble.

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you stop by?”

  “I’ve left you something.”

  “For breakfast?”

  He smiled. “No. Not for breakfast. You’re on your own there.”

  “Then what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “What’s it for?”

  A good question. He gave the most reasonable answer. “For love, I suppose.” And life, he thought, and all of its messy complications.

  “That’s nice,” she said. “Thoughtful of you, darling.”

  She rustled underneath the covers, burrowing for the optimum position. He stood in the doorway, waiting for the moment when her breathing deepened. He heard her sigh.

  “Helen,” he whispered.

  Her breathing came and went.

  “I love you,” he said.

  Her breathing came and went.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  Her breathing came and went.

  Having managed to fulfill his obligation to himself by the week’s end as promised, he locked up and left her to dream her dreams.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Miriam Whitelaw didn’t speak until they had crossed the river, passing through the Elephant and Castle and making the turn into the New Kent Road. Then she stirred herself only to say faintly, “There’s never been a convenient way to get out to Kent from Kensington, has there?” as if she meant to apologise for the bother she was causing them.

  Lynley glanced at her in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t respond. Next to him Sergeant Havers was hunched over, muttering into his car phone as she relayed the number plates and a description of Kenneth Fleming’s Lotus-7 back to Detective Constable Winston Nkata at New Scotland Yard. “Put it on the PNC,” she was saying. “And fax it to the district stations as well…. What?…Let me check.” She raised her head and said to Lynley, “Want the media to have it?” And when he nodded, she said, “Right. That’s okay. But nothing else for the moment. Got it?…Fine.” She replaced the phone and leaned back in her seat. She surveyed the congested street and sighed. “Where the dickens is everyone going?”

  “Weekend,” Lynley said. “Decent weather.”

  They were caught in a mass exodus from city to country, alternating between rolling along nicely and slowing to a sudden crawl. They had been on the road so far for forty minutes, weaving and inching their way first to the Embankment, then to Westminster Bridge, and from there to the continuously burgeoning urban mass that comprises south London. It promised to be a great deal more than forty additional minutes before they reached the Springburns in Kent.

  They had spent the first hour of their day going through Kenneth Fleming’s papers. Some of these were mixed with Mrs. Whitelaw’s own, crammed into the drawers of a davenport in the morning room on the ground floor of the house. Others were folded neatly into his bedside table. Still others were in a letter holder on the work top in the kitchen. Among them, they found his current contract with the Middlesex county side, his former contracts documenting his cricket career in Kent, half a dozen bids for jobs for Whitelaw Printworks, a brochure about boating in Greece, a three-week-old letter verifying an appointment with a solicitor in Maida Vale—which Havers pocketed—and the information they were looking for about his car.

  Mrs. Whitelaw attempted to help them in their search, but it was clear that her thought processes were muzzy at best. She wore the same sheath, jacket, and jewellery that she’d had on the previous night. Her cheeks and lips were colourless. Her eyes and nose were red. Her hair was rumpled. If she’d been to bed at all in the past twelve hours, she didn’t appear to have reaped a single benefit from the experience.

  Lynley gave her a second look in the mirror. He wondered how much longer she was going to hold up without a doctor’s intervention. She pressed a handkerchief to her mouth—like her clothing, it appeared to be last night’s as well—and with her elbow on the armrest, she kept her eyes closed for long periods. She had agreed to the trip to Kent immediately upon Lynley’s making the request of her. But looking at her now, he began to think it was one of his less inspired ideas.

  Still, it couldn’t be helped. They needed her to examine the cottage. She would be able to tell them what, if anything, was missing, what was marginally odd, or what was altogether wrong. But her ability to produce that informa
tion for them depended upon her powers of observation. And visual acumen depended upon a mind that was clear.

  “I don’t know about this, Inspector,” Sergeant Havers had muttered at him over the top of the Bentley in Staffordshire Terrace once they had tucked Mrs. Whitelaw into its back seat.

  Neither did he. Less so now when in the mirror he watched the straining of cords in her neck and saw the glimmer of tears seep out like melting dreams beneath her eyes.

  He wanted to say something to comfort the older woman. But he didn’t know the words or how to begin to say them because he didn’t altogether understand the nature of her grief. Her true relationship with Fleming was the great unknown that still had to be discussed, however delicately, between them.

  She opened her eyes. She caught him watching her, turned her head to the window, and made a pretence of noting the view.

  When they got beyond Lewisham and traffic loosened up, Lynley finally interrupted her thoughts. “Are you all right, Mrs. Whitelaw?” he asked. “Would you like to stop for a coffee somewhere?”

  Without turning from the window, she shook her head. He gunned the Bentley into the right lane and passed an antique Morris with an ageing hippie at the wheel.

  They drove on in silence. The car phone rang once. Havers answered it. She had a brief conversation with someone, consisting of “Yes?…What?…Who the hell wants to know?…No. You tell him we’re not confirming at this end. He’ll have to get his reliable source somewhere else.” She hung up and said, “Newspapers. They’re putting two and two together.”

  Lynley said, “Which paper?”

  “Daily Mirror at the moment.”

  “Christ.” And with a nod at the phone, “Who was that?”

  “Dee Harriman.”

  A blessing, Lynley thought. No one was better at fending off journalists than the chief superintendent’s secretary, who always diverted them with rapt questions about the state of one royal marriage or another royal divorce.