Playing for the Ashes

by Elizabeth George

  The boy shrugged.

  “Ms. Cooper,” Havers said, “you can phone for a solicitor. You might want to do that.”

  But Jean’s previous threat to do so had apparently been attentuated by her anger. “We don’t need a naffing solicitor,” she hissed. “He’s done nothing, my Jim. Nothing. Nothing. He’s sixteen years old. He’s the man of this family. He sees to his brother and sister. He has no interest in Kent. He was here Wednesday night. He was tucked in bed. I saw to it myself. He—”

  “Jimmy,” Lynley said, “we’ve made casts of two footprints that are going to match the boots you’re wearing. They’re Doc Martens, aren’t they?” The boy gave no response. “One print was at the bottom of the garden where you came over the fence from the paddock next door.”

  “This is rubbish,” Jeannie said.

  “The other was on the footpath from Lesser Springburn. At the base of that stile near the railway tracks.” Lynley told him the rest: the denim fibres that no doubt would match the knee rips of the jeans he was wearing, the oil on those fibres, the oil in the shrubbery near Lesser Springburn’s common. He willed the boy to react in some way. To shrink away from the words, to attempt to deny them, to give them something—however tenuous—to work with. But Jimmy said nothing.

  “What were you doing in Kent?” Lynley asked.

  “Don’t you talk to him like this!” Jean cried. “He wasn’t in Kent! He wasn’t ever!”

  “That’s not the case, Ms. Cooper. I dare say you know it.”

  “Get out of this house.” She jumped to her feet. She placed herself between Lynley and her son. “Get out. The both of you. You’ve had your say. You’ve asked your questions. You’ve seen the boy. Now get out. Out!”

  Lynley sighed. He felt doubly burdened—by what he knew, by what he needed to know. He said, “We’re going to have to have answers, Ms. Cooper. Jimmy can give them to us now or he can come along and give them to us later. But either way, he’s going to have to talk to us. Would you like to phone your solicitor now?”

  “Who d’you work for, Mr. Fancy Talk? Give me the name. It’s him I’ll phone.”

  “Webberly,” Lynley said. “Malcolm Webberly.”

  She seemed taken aback at Lynley’s cooperation. She narrowed her eyes and scrutinised him, perhaps wavering between standing her ground and making for the telephone. A trick, her expression said. If she left the room to make the call, they’d have her son alone and she knew it.

  “Does your son have a motorbike?” Lynley asked.

  “Motorbike proves nothing.”

  “May we see it, please?”

  “It’s a piece of rust. Wouldn’t take him as far as the Tower of London. He couldn’t of got to Kent on that bike. He couldn’t.”

  “It wasn’t in front of the house,” Lynley said. “Is it in the back?”

  “I said—”

  Lynley rose. “Does it leak oil, Ms. Cooper?”

  Jeannie clasped her hands in front of her in what could have been taken as an attitude of supplication. She began to twist one within the other. When Havers rose from her chair as well, Jean looked from one of them to the other, as if she were considering flight. Behind her, her son moved, pulling in his legs, shoving himself to his feet.

  He shambled into the kitchen. They heard him open a door that squeaked on unoiled hinges. Jean cried, “Jim!” but he didn’t answer.

  Lynley and Havers followed him, with his mother close on their heels. When they joined him, he was pulling open the door of a small shed at the bottom of the garden. Next to it, a gate gave way into what appeared to be a walk that ran between the houses on Cardale Street and those on the street behind them.

  As they watched, Jimmy Cooper wheeled his motorbike out of the shed. He straddled the seat, started the bike, let it idle, then shut it off. He did it all without looking at any of them. Then he stood to one side—right arm clasping left elbow, weight on left hip—as Lynley squatted to examine the machine.

  The motorbike was as Jean Cooper had said, largely rust. Where it wasn’t rust, it had once been red, but the colour had oxidized over time, leaving dull patches that, mixing with the rust, looked like scabs. The engine itself still ran, however. When Lynley started it himself, it turned over without difficulty and rumbled without misfiring once. He shut the engine off and set the bike on its kickstand.

  “I told you,” Jean said. “It’s a heap of rust. He drives it round Cubitt Town. He knows he isn’t to take it anywhere else. He does errands for me. He goes to see his grandma. Down by Millwall Park. He—”

  “Sir.” Sergeant Havers had been squatting on the bike’s other side, examining it. Now she lifted a finger, and Lynley saw the oil dotting the end of it like a blood blister. “It’s got a leak,” she added unnecessarily, and as she did another drop of oil fell from the engine onto the concrete of the path where Jimmy had parked it.

  He should have felt a sense of vindication, but instead Lynley felt only regret. At first he couldn’t understand why. The boy was surly, uncooperative, and filthy, a probable young thug who’d been asking for trouble for years. He’d found it now, he’d be put out of commission, but that last fact gave Lynley absolutely no pleasure. A moment’s consideration told him why. He’d been Jimmy’s age when he first fell out with one of his parents. He knew what it felt like to hate and to love an incomprehensible adult with equal force.

  He said heavily, “Sergeant. If you will,” and he walked to the gate and studied its wood as Havers read Jimmy Cooper the official caution.

  CHAPTER

  16

  They took him out the front, which gave the reporters and their companion photographers plenty of grist for tomorrow’s newspapers, all of it to be craftily moulded to reveal as much as possible through innuendo while still protecting the rights of everyone involved. The moment Lynley opened the door and motioned Jimmy Cooper out before him—with the boy’s head lolling forward like a marionette’s and his hands clasped in front of him as if he already wore handcuffs—a shout of excitement erupted from the small band of journalists. They thrust their way between the cars parked along the kerb, tape recorders and notebooks in hand. The photographers began to fire off pictures as the reporters barked questions.

  “An arrest, Inspector?”

  “This the oldest boy?”

  “Jimmy! You, Jim! Have a statement, lad?”

  “What’s this about? Jealousy? Money?”

  Jimmy ducked his head to one side. He muttered, “Bugger you lot,” and staggered when his toe caught on an uneven piece of pavement in the front garden. Lynley grabbed him by the arm to steady him. The cameras blazed to catch the moment.

  “You lot clear out!” The shriek came from the doorway where Jean Cooper stood with her other children looking out from beneath her obstructing arms. The cameras flashed in her direction. She pushed Stan and Sharon into the sitting room, out of range. She ran out of the house and snatched Lynley’s arm. The cameras snapped and whirred.

  “You leave him,” Jean cried.

  “I can’t do that,” Lynley said to her quietly. “If he won’t speak to us here, we have no choice. Would you like to come as well? It’s your right, Ms. Cooper. He’s under age.”

  She rubbed her hands down the sides of her oversize T-shirt. She cast a look back towards the house where her other two children stared at them from the sitting room window. She no doubt considered what might happen should she leave them alone, within reach of the press. She said, “I got to phone my brother first.”

  Jimmy said, “I don’t want her to come.”

  “Jim!”

  “I said.” He shook back his hair, realised his error when the photographers rapidly caught his unshielded face, lowered his head again.

  “You got to let me—”

  “No.”

  Lynley was aware of the fodder they were providing the reporters, who were listening as eagerly as they were taking notes. It was too soon for their newspapers to run a story that included Jimmy�
��s name, and their editors—governed by the Contempt of Court Act—would make certain not to print an identifiable photograph that could prejudice a trial and land them all in the nick for two years. But still the papers would be sure to use what they could, when they could, so he said quietly, “Phone your solicitor if you’d like, Ms. Cooper. Have him meet us at the Yard.”

  “What d’you think I am? A piece of fluff from Knightsbridge? I don’t have a bleeding…Jim! Jim! You let me come.”

  Jimmy looked at Lynley for the first time. “I don’t want her. I won’t talk with her there.”

  “Jimmy!” His mother said his name in a wail. She spun and stumbled back into the house.

  The reporters acted the part of Greek chorus again.

  “Solicitor? Then he’s a definite suspect.”

  “Will you confirm that, Inspector? Is it safe to assume—”

  “Is Maidstone Constabulary cooperating completely?”

  “Have you the autopsy report yet?”

  “Come on, Inspector. Give us something, for God’s sake.”

  Lynley ignored them. Havers swung open the gate. She pushed past them and made room for Lynley and the boy. The reporters and photographers dogged them down the street to the Bentley. When their questions continued to go ignored, they merely increased their volume, shifting in subject matter from “Do you have a statement?” to “Kill your dad, boy?” The noise brought neighbours into gardens. Dogs started to bark.

  Havers said, “Jesus,” under her breath and, “Mind your head there,” to Jimmy as Lynley opened the back door of the car. As the boy slid inside and the photographers pressed round the window to record every nuance of expression on his face, Jean Cooper burst through them. She waved a Tesco’s bag in her hand. Lynley stiffened. Havers said, “Watch it, sir!” and moved forward as if she would intercede.

  Jean flung a reporter to one side. She snarled, “Sod you,” at another. She thrust the bag at Lynley. “You listen to me. You hurt my son…You bloody even touch him…” Her voice quavered. She pressed her knuckles against her mouth. “I know my rights,” she said. “He’s sixteen years old. You don’t ask him one question without a solicitor. You don’t even ask him to spell his name.” She leaned over and shouted through the raised window of the Bentley. “Jimmy, you don’t talk to no one till the solicitor comes. You hear that, Jim? You don’t talk to no one.”

  Her son stared straight ahead. Jean cried out his name. Lynley said, “We can arrange the solicitor at our end, Ms. Cooper. If that would be of help.”

  She straightened and flung her head back in a movement not unlike her son’s. She said, “I don’t fancy your kind of help.” She pushed back through the reporters and photographers. She broke into a run as they began to follow.

  Lynley handed the Tesco’s bag to Havers. They were heading north on Manchester Road before she opened it. She said, ploughing through it, “One change of clothes. Two pieces of bread and butter. Sailing book of some sort. Pair of glasses.” She shifted in her seat and said as she offered these last to Jimmy, “D’you want the specs?”

  He stared at her in answer, offered her an expression of “Get knotted,” then looked away.

  Havers popped the glasses back into the bag, put it on the floor, and said, “Right, then,” as Lynley picked up the car phone and punched in the number for New Scotland Yard. He tracked down Detective Constable Nkata in the incidents room where the background noise of telephones and conversation told him that at least some of the officers he’d called off rota to work the weekend had returned from their investigations into the Wednesday night movements of the case’s primary suspects. He said, “What do we have?”

  Nkata said, “Kensington’s in. No change there, man. She’s staying clean, your Mrs. Whitelaw.”

  “What’s the report?”

  “Staffordshire Terrace’s lined with conversions. You know that, ’Spector?”

  “I’ve been in the street, Nkata.”

  “Every conversion, it has six, seven flats. Every flat, it has three, four occupants.”

  “This is beginning to sound like the DC’s lament.”

  “All I mean here, man, is that that woman’s clean. We talked to every Jack and Dick we could find in every flipping flat. No one in Staffordshire Terrace could say they’d seen her go anywhere in the last week.”

  “Which doesn’t say much for their powers of observation, does it? Since she went somewhere with us yesterday morning.”

  “But if she’s trekking out to Kent at midnight or there-abouts, she is using her car to get there, right? She’s not asking a taxi to pop her out and wait while she sets a fire. She’s not taking a bus. She’s not taking the train. Not at that hour. And that’s where she’s clean.”

  “Go on.”

  “Her car’s parked in a garage behind the house, in a mews called—here it is—Phillips Walk. Now, according to our blokes was out there this morning, Phillips Walk is nine-tenths conversions these days.”

  “Mews cottages?”

  “Right. Bumping up against each other like tarts at King’s Cross. With windows above and windows below. All open Wednesday night ’cause the weather was fine.”

  “I take it that no one saw Mrs. Whitelaw leave? No one heard her car start?”

  “And on Wednesday night, baby in the cottage opposite her garage was up past four in the morning, being sick on his mummy’s shoulder. Mummy would’ve heard the car since she spent the night pacing in front of the windows trying to settle the nip down. Nothing, though. So unless Mrs. Whitelaw levitated out of there off her roof, she’s clean, ’Spector. Sorry if that’s a spanner.”

  “No matter,” Lynley said. “The news doesn’t surprise me. She’s already been given an alibi by another of the principals.”

  “You like her for the killer?”

  “Not particularly. But I’ve always been partial to tying up loose ends.” He finished the call by telling Nkata to have an interrogation room ready and to let the press office know that a sixteen-year-old boy from the East End was going to be assisting the police in their enquiries. He replaced the phone and they made the rest of the journey to New Scotland Yard in silence.

  The journalists on the Isle of Dogs had obviously phoned whatever colleagues they had hanging about Victoria Street, because when Lynley pulled into the entrance of New Scotland Yard in Broadway, the Bentley was immediately surrounded. Among the jostling crowd shouting questions and thrusting cameras towards the backseat, the television news media were also represented by aggressive cameramen who shouldered through the others.

  Havers muttered, “Holy hell,” as Lynley said, “Lower your head, Jim,” and inched the car towards the kiosk and the entry to the underground parking. They gained the kiosk at the cost of a hundred or more photographs and countless feet of video footage, which would no doubt appear on every television station by the day’s end.

  Through it all, Jimmy Cooper didn’t react other than to avert his head from the cameras. He betrayed neither interest nor trepidation as Lynley and Havers escorted him to the lift and then through one corridor after another where a press officer hurried along with them for a minute, notebook in her hand, saying unnecessarily considering the gauntlet they’d just run, “The announcement’s gone out, Inspector. A boy. Age sixteen. The East End,” with a quick glance at Jimmy. “Anything else safe to add at this point? The boy’s school? Number of brothers and sisters? Veiled allusions to the family? Anything from Kent?”

  Lynley shook his head. The officer said, “Right. Our phones are ringing like fire alarms. You’ll give me more when you can, won’t you?”

  She faded away without receiving an answer.

  Constable Nkata met them at the interrogation room, where the tape recorder was set and the chairs were arranged, two on each side of a metal-legged table, two backed against the facing walls. He said to Lynley, “You want his dabs?” to which Lynley replied, “Not yet.” He indicated which chair he wished the boy to take. “May we chat for a
moment, Jimmy? Or would you prefer to wait for your mother to send a solicitor?”

  Jimmy slumped into the chair, hands picking at the hem of his T-shirt. “Don’t matter.”

  Lynley said to Nkata, “Let us know when he gets here. We’ll be chatting till then.”

  Nkata’s expression told Lynley the message had been received. They’d get what they could from the boy before his solicitor arrived to muzzle him indefinitely.

  Lynley flipped the record switch on the tape machine, gave the date and the time, and indicated the persons present in the interrogation room: himself, Sergeant Barbara Havers, and James Cooper, the son of Kenneth Fleming. He said again, “Would you like a solicitor present, Jimmy? Shall we wait?” and when the boy shrugged, Lynley said, “You’re going to need to answer.”

  “I don’t need no naffing solicitor, all right? I don’t want one.”

  Lynley sat opposite the boy. Sergeant Havers went to one of the chairs against the wall. Lynley heard the scratch of a match being lit and smelled the cigarette smoke a second later. Jimmy’s eyes rested hungrily if briefly on Havers, and then flitted away. Lynley mentally saluted his sergeant. Her habit sometimes served them well. He said, “Smoke if you want,” to the boy. Sergeant Havers flipped her matches onto the table. “Need a fag?” she asked Jimmy. He shook his head once. But his feet moved restlessly on the floor and his fingers continued to pluck at his shirt.

  “It’s rough talking in front of your mother,” Lynley said. “She means well, but she’s a mother, isn’t she? They like to hang on to a chap. They like to hang about.”

  Jimmy wiped a finger beneath his nose. His glance went to the matchbook, dropped away.

  “They don’t tend to give one much privacy either,” Lynley continued. “At least mine never did. And they have a hell of a time recognising when a boy’s become a man.”

  Jimmy raised his head long enough to brush his hair from his face. He used the movement to steal a look at Lynley.