“A promise you haven’t kept, I take it?”
“You’re wrong about that. Once we ended the affair, I never saw Gabbie again without Hugh. Until she phoned on Wednesday night.” He looked to the floor miserably. “And then she needed my help. So I gave it to her. And she was…she was grateful.”
“Need we ask how she demonstrated her gratitude?” Havers asked politely.
“Damn,” Mollison whispered. He blinked rapidly. “It didn’t happen on Wednesday night. I didn’t see her then. It was Thursday afternoon.” He lifted his head. “She was upset. She was practically hysterical. It was my fault. I wanted to do something to help. It just happened between us. I’d rather Allie didn’t know.”
“The nature of the help you gave her Wednesday night,” Lynley said. “You supplied her a place to stay?”
“In Shepherd’s Market. I have a flat there with three other blokes from Essex. We use it when we…” He dropped his head again.
“Want to boff someone besides your wives on the sly,” Havers said tiredly.
Mollison didn’t react. He merely said with equal tiredness, “When she phoned on Wednesday night, I told her I’d arrange for her to use the flat.”
“How did she get in?”
“We keep the keys there. In the building. With the porter. So that our wives…You know.”
“And the address?”
“I’ll have to take you there. I’m sorry, but she won’t let you in otherwise. She won’t even answer the door.”
Lynley got to his feet. Mollison and Havers did likewise. Lynley said, “Your row with Fleming. The one you phoned him about on Wednesday night. It had nothing to do with the Pakistani player on the Middlesex side, did it?”
“It had to do with Gabbie,” Mollison said. “That’s why Ken went out to the Springburns to see her.”
“You knew he was going.”
“I knew.”
“What happened out there?”
Mollison’s hands were at his sides, but still Lynley could see his thumbs picking at the skin round his nails. “Gabbie’ll have to tell you that,” he replied.
What Mollison was willing to add to his story was the cause of his fight with Kenneth Fleming. He’d manufactured the tale about the Pakistani player for Allison’s benefit, he said. Had they only conducted the interview in the corridor at China Silk Wharf on the previous evening, he would have been forthright. But he couldn’t venture honesty in Allison’s presence. It too much ran the risk of taking them in the direction of a disclosure about Thursday afternoon. Besides, the row about the Pakistani player was what he’d used to explain away his injuries to his wife when the fracas occurred in the first place.
They headed in the direction of Mayfair, rolling through Eaton Square where the central gardens were a wash of colour supplied by everything from pansies to tulips. As they made the turn into Grosvenor Place and buzzed along the buff wall that sheltered Buckingham Palace Gardens from the scrutiny of the curious, Mollison continued.
What happened between him and Fleming, he said, did indeed happen after the third day of the four-day match between Middlesex and Kent. And it did happen in the car park at Lord’s. But it started in the bar—“the one in the Pavilion…behind the Long Room…no doubt the bartender can verify the story if you like”—where Mollison and Fleming, along with six or seven other players, were having a friendly drink together.
“I was drinking tequila,” he said. “It’s a stealthy little bugger, the way it hits you. It goes to your head before you know what’s happened. Your tongue gets looser than it ought. It gets looser faster. So you say things to blokes that you’d otherwise never say.”
He’d heard rumours, Mollison told them, just the odd word dropped now and again linking Fleming to Gabriella Patten. He never heard or saw anything first hand himself—“They were careful about that, but then that’s Gabriella’s way. She doesn’t advertise the fact when she’s taken a lover”—but when their affair began to head in the direction of marriage, they relaxed their vigilance. People saw. People speculated. Mollison heard.
He didn’t know exactly what it was that prompted him to speak, Mollison told them. He hadn’t…well, he hadn’t done anything with Gabriella for the last two years. When their own affair had ended—okay, okay, when he’d confessed his sins to Allison so that he’d had to end the affair or lose his wife—he’d felt relieved and utterly recommitted to his marriage, and that feeling had lasted about two months during which time he was absolutely faithful to Allison. No playing around with anyone at all, not even for laughs. But after that, he began to miss Gabbie. He missed her so much that half the time with Allison he didn’t even want to…He tried to pretend but there are some things a bloke can’t fake…. Well, they knew what he meant, didn’t they? He consoled himself with the thought that Gabbie probably missed him as well. He thought she would do, wouldn’t she, because Hugh always drank like a sailor on leave, which made him a disaster between the sheets. And she wasn’t having it off with anyone else. At least he didn’t think she was. After a time, the soreness of missing her wore off a fraction. He had a few laughs with other women, which made his performance with Allie all the stronger, which allowed him to talk himself into believing that his fling with Gabbie had been just that, good fun while it lasted but still a fling.
And then he heard the speculation about Fleming. Ken’s living circumstances had always been bizarre, but he—Mollison—had assumed that in the long run Fleming would return to his wife when he’d worked out of his system whatever he needed to work out of his system. That’s what blokes generally did, wasn’t it? But when word went round that Fleming had taken on a pricey solicitor to sort through his situation and to draw up paperwork, and when equal word went round that Hugh and Gabriella Patten were no longer occupying space beneath the same roof, and when he himself saw an affectionate exchange between Fleming and Gabriella on the concourse at Lord’s not a stone’s throw away from the Pavilion where anyone might have seen them…. Well, Mollison was no fool, was he?
“I was jealous,” he admitted. He had directed Lynley to a narrow, cobbled street that formed the south boundary of Shepherd’s Market. They parked in front of a pub called Ye Grapes, heavily hung with ivy. They got out of the car and he leaned against it, apparently determined to finish his tale before taking them to the leading female character in it. Sergeant Havers continued making notes of their conversation. Lynley crossed his arms and listened impassively.
“I could have had her myself—married her, I mean—and I hadn’t wanted her,” Mollison said. “But now that someone else had her—”
“Dog in the manger,” Havers said.
“That’s what it was. That and the tequila and being forced to remember what it had been like when she and I were together. And having to think about her doing all that with another bloke. Especially a bloke I knew. I began to feel what a fool I’d been to miss her so badly. She’d probably gone from me to someone else straightaway. I was probably just one in a line of her lovers with Fleming at the end, the wally she’d caught.”
So he’d made a remark in the form of a question that day after the cricket match. It was crude, it demonstrated a familiarity with Gabriella that bore the unmistakable ring of authenticity. He’d rather not tell them what it was, if they didn’t mind. He wasn’t very pleased with the nasty passion that had inspired it, nor with the lack of gallantry that had allowed him to say it in the first place.
“Ken went completely blank at first,” Mollison said. “It was as if we were talking about two different people.” So he drove the point home with an allusion to the number of cricketers who’d had a share of what Gabriella Patten was willing to pass round the table.
Fleming left the bar, but he didn’t leave Lord’s. When Mollison got out to the car park, the other man was waiting.
“He jumped me,” Mollison said. “I don’t know if he was defending her honour or just letting me have it. In either case, he caught me off guard. If the
groundsman hadn’t come along to pull him off, I’d probably be the murder you’re investigating right now.”
“And Wednesday night when you spoke to him,” Lynley said. “What was that actually about?”
“I told you the truth about my motivation, at least. I wanted to apologise. We were probably going to play together when the team was chosen for the Ashes test matches. I wanted no bad blood between us.”
“What was his reaction to that?”
“He said it didn’t matter, that it was forgotten, that in any case he was going to sort through the muddle with Gabbie that night.”
“He no longer seemed bothered?”
“I expect he was bothered to the bone. But I was the last person he’d let know that, wasn’t I?” Mollison pushed his way off the car. “Gabbie can tell you how bothered he was. She can show you as well.”
He led them to Shepherd Street, a few yards from where they had parked the Bentley. There, across from a florist with a window filled with irises, roses, narcissi, and carnations, he pressed the bell for a flat marked by the number 4 and no other identification. He waited for a moment and pressed two more times. Like husband, like wife, Lynley thought sardonically.
After a moment, the sound of static flickered from the small metal speaker next to the panel of buttons. Guy said into it, “It’s Guy.”
A moment passed before the door buzzed. He pushed it open, saying to Havers and Lynley, “Don’t be rough with her. You’ll see there isn’t any need.”
He led them down a corridor to the rear of the building and up a short flight of stairs to a mezzanine. Off this, a door stood slightly off the latch. Mollison pushed it open, saying, “Gabbie?”
“In here,” was the response. “Jean-Paul is taking his aggressions out on me. Ouch! Be careful. I’m not made of rubber.”
In here was the sitting room round the corner from the entry. Its overstuffed furniture had been pushed against the walls in order to accommodate a massage table. On this a lightly tanned woman lay upon her stomach. She was petite but voluptuously proportioned, her nudity partially cloaked by a sheet. Her head was turned away from them towards windows that overlooked a courtyard.
“You didn’t phone first,” she said in a sleepy voice as Jean-Paul—garbed from his turban to his toes in white—worked on her right thigh. “Hmm. That’s wonderful,” she whispered.
“I couldn’t.”
“Really. Whyever not? Is the dread Allison being a bother again?”
Mollison’s face flamed. “I’ve brought someone,” he said. “You need to talk to him, Gabbie. I’m sorry.”
The head—capped by a billowing of hair the colour of harvested wheat—slowly turned in their direction. The blue eyes with their heavy fringe of dark lashes went from Mollison to Havers to Lynley and remained on the last. She winced as Jean-Paul’s industrious fingers found a muscle in her thigh that had not as yet submitted to his efforts. She said, “And who exactly are these someones you’ve brought?”
“They’ve got Ken’s car, Gabbie,” Mollison said. His thumbs played nervously along his fingers. “They’ve been looking for you. They’ve already started to comb Mayfair. It’s better for us both if—”
“You mean it’s better for you.” Gabriella Patten’s eyes were still on Lynley. She lifted one foot and rotated it. Perhaps seeing this as direction, Jean-Paul grasped it and began his work, from toes, to ball, to arch. “Lovely,” she murmured. “You reduce me to softened butter, Jean-Paul.”
Jean-Paul was all business. His hand moved up her leg, from there to her thigh. “Vous avez tort,” he said in brusque disagreement. “Feel this, Madame Patten. How tense it is become in an instant. Like twisted stone. More than before. Much more. And here and here.” He clucked disapproval.
Lynley felt his lips twitch in a smile that he did his best to control. Jean-Paul was more efficient than a polygraph.
Abruptly, Gabriella shook the masseur’s hands from her body. She said, “I think I’ve had enough for today.” She flipped over, sat up, and swung her legs off the table. The sheet dropped to her waist. Jean-Paul hastily draped her shoulders with a large, pristine white towel. She took her time about using it as a sarong. As Jean-Paul collapsed the massage table and began moving the furniture back into position, Gabriella strolled to a gate-legged table not two feet from where her visitors stood. On this a heavy glass bowl held an array of fruit. She selected an orange and dug manicured fingernails into its skin. The scent of its flesh fairly leapt into the air. She began to peel it away. She said in a quiet voice to Mollison, “Thank you, Judas.”
Mollison groaned. “Come on, Gabbie. What were the options?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask your personal barrister? I’m sure she’d be more than willing to advise you.”
“You can’t stay here forever.”
“I didn’t want that.”
“They need to talk to you. They need to know what happened. They need to get to the bottom of things.”
“Do they? And when did you decide to play the little copper’s nark?”
“Gabbie, just tell them what happened when Ken got to the cottage. Tell them what you told me. That’s all they want to know. Then they’ll be off.”
Gabriella stared defiantly at Mollison for a long moment. She finally dropped her head and gave her attention to the orange. A segment of its peel slipped out of her hand, and she and Mollison bent simultaneously to retrieve it. He reached it first. Her hand closed over his. “Guy,” she said in an urgent voice.
“It’ll all work out,” he said gently. “I promise. Just tell them the truth. Will you do that?”
“If I talk, will you stay?”
“We’ve already been through that. I can’t. You know.”
“I don’t mean afterwards. I mean now. While they’re here. Will you stay?”
“Allison thinks I’ve gone to the sports centre. I couldn’t tell her where…Gabbie, I’ve got to get back.”
“Please,” she said. “Don’t make me face this alone. I won’t know what to say.”
“Just tell them the truth.”
“Help me tell it. Please.” Her fingers moved from his wrist to his arm. “Please,” she repeated. “I won’t take long, Guy. I promise you.”
It seemed as if Mollison tore his eyes from her only through an effort of will. He said, “I can’t spare more than half an hour.”
“Thank you,” she replied on a breath. “I’ll put on some clothes.” She brushed past them and disappeared into a bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
Jean-Paul let himself out discreetly. The others made their way farther into the sitting room. Sergeant Havers went to one of two chairs that sat beneath the courtyard windows. She plopped down, heaved her shoulder bag to the floor, and balanced one brogue-shod foot on the opposite knee. She caught Lynley’s gaze and rolled her eyes heavenward. Lynley smiled. The sergeant had done an admirable job of controlling herself thus far. Gabriella Patten was the sort of woman Havers would have preferred to swat like a fly.
Mollison went first to the fireplace where he fingered the silk leaves of an artificial aspidistra. He examined himself in the mirrored wall. Then he went to the recessed bookshelves and ran his finger along a collection of paperbacks heavily devoted to Dick Francis, Jeffrey Archer, and Nelson DeMille. He bit at his fingernails for a few moments before swinging round to Lynley.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he said impulsively.
“What isn’t?”
He canted his head towards the doorway. “That bloke. The fact that he was here. It makes her look bad. But it doesn’t mean what you think.”
Lynley wondered what conclusion Mollison assumed he had drawn from Gabriella’s brief but affecting performance. He decided to opt for silence and see where Mollison’s verbal ruminations took him. He wandered to the window and inspected the courtyard where two small birds dipped and bobbed along the edge of a fountain.
“She cares.”
“Abo
ut what?” Havers asked.
“About what happened to Ken. She’s acting like she doesn’t because of Wednesday night. Because of what he said to her. Because of what he did. She’s hurt. She doesn’t want to show it. Would you?”
“I think I’d tread carefully in a murder investigation,” Havers said, “especially if I was the last known person to have seen the corpse before it was a corpse.”
“She didn’t do anything. She just got out fast. And she had cause for that, if you want to know the truth.”
“That’s what we’re looking for.”
“Good. Because I’m quite prepared to tell it.”
Gabriella Patten had rejoined them. She stood framed in the sitting room doorway, clothed in black leggings, a thinstrapped top printed with tropical flowers, and a diaphanous black overjacket that billowed as she moved to the sofa. She unfastened the delicate gold buckles of the black sandals she was wearing and slipped the sandals from her feet. These—pedicured, with toenails painted to match the pink of her fingernails—she curled beneath her as she took position in a corner of the sofa and cast a fleeting smile in Mollison’s direction.
He said, “Do you want anything, Gabbie? Tea? Coffee? A Coke?”
“It’s enough that you’re here. It’s going to be tortuous, having to live through it again. Bless you for staying.” She placed the flat of her palm to the sofa next to her. She said, “Will you?”
In reply, Mollison pushed off from the bookshelves and sat what appeared to be a calculated eight inches from her, close enough to communicate his support while at the same time just beyond her reach. Lynley wondered which of them was supposed to receive the message implied by those eight inches: the police or Gabriella Patten herself. She seemed oblivious of it. Straightening her shoulders and her spine, she turned her attention to the others with a shake of the soft curls that fell to her shoulders.
Playing for the Ashes Page 40