Kincaid looked back as he followed her from the room. Tim Franklin was still pounding and chanting, his head jerking to a rhythm Kincaid couldn't hear.
Chapter Eighteen
The hands on the Midget's dash clock read straight-up six o'clock when Kincaid pulled up to the curb in Carlingford Road. He killed the engine and sat in the silent car, unable to shake the depression that had ridden him all the way back from Dorset. If he'd listened to Gemma he wouldn't have wasted a day on a fool's errand and still be facing what he'd dreaded in the first place. Telling himself there was no point in putting it off any longer, he still stalled, taking his time locking the car and fastening the tarp over its cherry-red paint.
There was no answer to his knock on the Major's door. He waited a moment, then climbed the stairs and let himself into Jasmine's flat. A sleek, black body wrapped around his ankles as he turned on the lamps. "Hullo, Sid. You doing okay, mate?" Reaching down, he stroked Sid's head until the cat's green eyes closed to contented slits. "Be patient, you'll get your supper."
Kincaid unlocked the French doors and stepped outside. The Major knelt before the roses he'd bought in Jasmine's memory. Only the pale fabric of his trousers across his buttocks and the rhythmic motion of the hand holding the trowel made him visible in the dusk. Kincaid descended the steps and crossed the square of garden, then squatted beside him. "You're working late. The light's almost gone."
The Major gave one last dig with the trowel and sat back, hands on his knees. "Weeds. Can't keep up with 'em this time of year. They'll take over like the Day of the bloody Triffids if you give 'em an inch."
Kincaid smiled. Maybe the Major had another secret occupation even less likely than choral singing—an addiction to watching late-night B movies on the telly. "I wondered if I might have a word with you."
The Major looked at him for the first time. "Of course. Let me just wash up." He stood up, his knees popping audibly. Kincaid trailed behind him as he cleaned his trowel in the work area under the steps, then followed him into the kitchen as he washed his hands and scrubbed his nails.
The small kitchen was spotlessly clean, the countertops bare except for a marked-down bag of potatoes and an unopened carton of beer. "Like one?" the Major asked as he wiped his hands on a tea towel, and when Kincaid nodded he twisted two tops off and stowed them neatly in the bin under the sink. "Pensioner's luxury," he said after he'd taken a swallow and smacked his lips. "Pinch pennies on necessities in order to buy good beer once or twice a week." He smiled, his teeth still strong and white under the toothbrush mustache. "Worth it, though."
They went into the spartan sitting room. The Major switched on a lamp and motioned Kincaid to a seat on the sofa while he took the armchair himself. The brown, nubby fabric on the arms of the chair had patches rubbed shiny with wear and its seat cushion bore a permanent indentation. Kincaid imagined the Major sitting there evening after solitary evening with his bottle of beer and the telly for company, and he was more loath than ever to say what he knew he must. "Major, I understand you served in India after the war."
The Major regarded him quizzically. "Understand from whom, Mr. Kincaid? I don't believe I've ever mentioned it."
Kincaid, feeling as though he'd been caught out in a distasteful act of voyeurism, fought the urge to apologize. "I'm conducting a murder investigation, Major, and as unpleasant as I may personally find it, I've had to check background on everyone who had even the slightest connection with Jasmine. We called up your service records. You were stationed in Calcutta during the time that Jasmine's family lived there." He waited for the explosion, but none came.
After a moment the Major took another swallow from his beer and sighed. "Aye, well, I'd have mentioned it myself if I'd known it was of any importance to you. It was all a very long time ago."
"But you told Jasmine?"
"Aye, and wished I had not."
"Why was that, Major?" Kincaid asked quietly, setting his beer on the end table and leaning forward. For the first time he noticed the age spots patterning the Major's callused hands.
"Because I couldn't tell her the whole truth and it created a falseness between us. She might not have noticed, but I could never feel as comfortable with her after that." He paused, and when Kincaid didn't speak he went on after a moment. "I'm a god-fearing man, Mr. Kincaid, but I don't believe the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. To my mind, God wouldn't be so bloody unfair. But Jasmine now, I thought she would see it differently, would take it upon herself, and she'd had her share of suffering, poor lass." Taking a final pull on his beer, he held up the empty bottle and raised an eyebrow at Kincaid.
Kincaid shook his head. "No, thanks." He waited until the Major returned from the kitchen with a fresh bottle, then said, "What would Jasmine have taken upon herself, Major?"
The Major stared at the beer bottle as he rotated it delicately between his fingertips. "Do you have any idea what happened in Calcutta in 1946, Mr. Kincaid?" He looked up, and Kincaid saw that his pale blue eyes were bloodshot. "Muslims seeking partition attacked and killed Hindus, and the rioting that followed spread through the city like wildfire. The history books refer to it as the Calcutta Killings." He gave a snort of derision. "Makes it sound like a bank robbery, or some idiot gunning people down in a supermarket." Shaking his head in disgust, he said, "They've no idea. You see horrors enough in your job, I dare say, but I hope you never see the likes of those days. Six thousand bodies in the streets by the time it was all over. Six thousand bodies rotting, or burning in the fires that smoldered for days, You could never forget the smell. It clung to your skin, the roof of your mouth, the inside of your nose." He drank deeply, as if the beer might wash the memory of the taste from his mouth.
"Jasmine would have been only a child," Kincaid said, doing some mental arithmetic. "Why should she have felt guilty?"
"Jasmine's father was a minor civil servant, a paper pusher, with a reputation for not being particularly competent. He was in charge of evacuating a small residential area, a sort of civil defense sergeant." The Major drank again, and Kincaid fancied he heard the edges of his words beginning to slur. "He bungled it. Only a few families got out before the mob poured through the streets. I've wondered since if he put his own family first, or if he just turned tail to save his own skin."
Kincaid waited silently for what he now guessed was coming. He felt the rough, brown fabric of the sofa under his fingertips, smelled a faint spicy scent that might have been the Major's aftershave, overlaid with the odor of beer.
"It took me three days to find my wife and daughter, and then I only recognized them by their clothes. I won't tell you what had been done to them before they died—it doesn't bear thinking of, even now." The rims of the Major's eyes were as red now as if they'd been lined with a pencil, but he still spoke slowly, reflectively. "I thought nothing of it when Jasmine first moved here, Dent's a common enough name, after all. It was only when she began to tell me about her childhood that I realized who she must be." He smiled. "Thought someone up there," he raised his eyes heavenward, "was playing some kind of practical joke on me, at first. Then the more I came to know her the more I wondered if she'd been sent to me as a replacement for my own daughter. Silly old bugger," he added, the words definitely slurring now. Then he looked directly into Kincaid's eyes and said more distinctly, "You see I couldn't have told Jasmine, don't you, Mr. Kincaid? I wouldn't have hurt her for the world."
Kincaid finished his beer and stood up. "Thank you, Major. I'm sorry." Letting himself out the back way, he climbed the steps to Jasmine's flat and stood a moment at the top, looking down into the garden. The Major's roses were only visible as dark shapes in the light from the flat's windows. Roses as tribute to Jasmine, and perhaps to his long-dead wife and daughter as well. Kincaid felt sure that the Major had carried their deaths inside himself for most of a lifetime, a tightly wrapped nugget of sorrow. Perhaps his contact with Jasmine had begun a much-needed release.
Lights came on
in the house behind the garden. Through the windows the illuminated rooms were as sharp and clear as stage sets, and Kincaid wondered what secret despair their inhabitants hid under their everyday personas. Someone drew the curtains, the glimpse into those unknown lives vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Kincaid shivered and went in.
I've spent my life waiting for things that never happened, and now I find I can't wait for the one thing that will finally, inevitably come.
I'm afraid. Felicity says the tumor's growth could break my ribs, and then even the morphine may not protect me from the pain. As it is, swallowing solid food becomes more difficult every day, and I can't bear the idea of a feeding tube, or of being utterly helpless, bathed and cleaned like a baby.
Life has an odd way of coming full circle. It's rather ironic that Felicity is the one person who's been unhonest with me. Although Meg's adopted my disease like a stepchild, fascinated with its every aspect, she still tries to shield me from what's to come. Can I count on her to help me?
Don't need Meg's help, that's just weakness. It won't keep me from being alone, but at least I'll be prepared, meet death face-to-face rather than have it take me unawares.
Poor Meg. What will she do without looking after me, or without me to look after her?
Should I say good-bye to Theo? No. That's weakness on my part again. Better for him to remember me as I was. And I find I don't want to know if the business is going well—I'd know in an instant from his face if it's not, and this last reprieve is all I can give him. From now on he'll have to manage the best he can.
It's odd how my world has shrunk to the walls of the flat and the view from the garden steps, and what importance those who come through my door have assumed Their visits are the clock of my days: Felicity's morning briskness, Meg's lunchtime breathless disarray, the Major's comforting teatime silence, and Duncan—Duncan is dessert, I suppose. No matter how I've been, if he stops by in the evening I find the strength to talk, to listen, to laugh. He can't know what a difference he's made in my life, yet if I tell him I'm afraid it will spoil the ease between us.
Sidhi watches me as I write, puts a paw up occasionally to touch the moving pen. One of those ridiculous human occupations, I'm sure he thinks, as incomprehensible and fascinating as the turning pages of a book. I think how much I'll miss him before I can stop myself. How absurd. I shan't miss anything at all.
He closed the last journal slowly and returned it to the shoebox. A glass of wine stood half-drunk on the coffee table—he'd become so absorbed in reading that he'd forgotten it.
The final journal entry was dated the week before Jasmine's death and occupied the last page in the book.
Kincaid stood and stretched, finishing his wine and carrying his crepe wrappers into the kitchen. After leaving Jasmine's flat he'd changed into jeans and sweater and walked up Rosslyn Hill to the crepe stand. The young man in the open booth poured batter and wielded his spatula with the dexterity of an artist, his arms bare against the evening chill. "Ham? Cheese? Mushrooms? Bell peppers? Fancy anything else, then?" he'd asked, the questions not interrupting his concentration or the smoothness of his movements. Kincaid had watched, his back turned deliberately to the Häagen-Dazs shop, determined not to think of Jasmine and rum-raisin ice cream.
Now he washed out his glass and stood irresolutely in his kitchen, tired from the day's driving, too restless and unsettled to contemplate sleep. After a long moment he picked up his keys from the counter and went downstairs to Jasmine's flat.
He'd left a lamp on earlier for the cat, chiding himself for being a fool. Weren't cats supposed to see in the dark? And he doubted very much whether Sid found comfort in the familiar light.
Everything looked just as he had left it, looked just as it had looked a week ago when he and Gemma had searched the flat from top to bottom. Nevertheless, he started again, lifting the mattress on the hospital bed, feeling under the armchair cushion, running his hands behind the rows of the books on the shelves. He moved to the secretary, examining each nook and slot as carefully as he had the first time.
People's lives accumulated the oddest detritus, he thought, staring at the items littering the top drawer. Stubs of old theater tickets, aged and yellowed business cards, receipts for things bought and forgotten long ago, all mixed with a jumble of pens, pencil stubs and scraps of paper.
What would he leave behind in his flat if he were to walk in front of a bus tomorrow? What would some anonymous searcher make of his dusty collection of paperback science fiction, or the sixties' and seventies' records he couldn't bear to give away even though he no longer owned a turntable?
What would they make of the wedding photos stuck in the back of his bureau drawer? Of Vic, with her Alice-in-Wonderland hair and pale, innocent face—Vic, who had sabotaged much of his trust and naive faith in human nature? He should thank her, he supposed—neither quality would have proved advantageous to a rising career copper.
The school reports and drawings, term papers and rugby trophies his mother had boxed away in her Cheshire attic with other childish souvenirs. What had Jasmine done with the mementos of her childhood? He'd found no snapshots or letters, nothing from the years in India or Dorset except the journals.
He moved into the bedroom. Jasmine's silky caftans brushed against his fingers as he felt along the back of the wardrobe. To one side hung business suits and dresses, their shoulders covered with a film of dust, as were the stylish pumps neatly arranged in the wardrobe's floor.
Finding nothing there, he sat down on the small stool before the dressing table and stared at his reflection in the mirror. The light from the lamp on the table's right side cast shadows that rendered unfamiliar the planes and angles of his face and left his eyes dark. He blinked and pushed the hair off his brow with his fingers, then pulled open the middle drawer. Women's cosmetics never ceased to amaze him. Even women like Jasmine, who in all other respects were relatively orderly, seemed unable to do more than confine the mess to a specific area. And they never seemed to throw the used bits and pieces away. Jasmine's drawer proved no exception. Half-empty pots of eye shadow and rouge, lipsticks used down to the metal inner casing, brushes and sponges, all covered with a fine dusting of face powder. He sniffed. From somewhere came the scent he associated with Jasmine. Exotically floral with a hint of musk, it almost reminded him of incense.
He was lifting the slips and nightgowns in a bottom drawer when his hand struck something hard. His pulse quickened, then sank as he lifted the object out and realized it was not a journal but a framed photograph. He turned it over curiously.
She was instantly recognizable. When he'd passed Briantspuddle the day before and imagined a twenty-year-old Jasmine walking out her cottage door, he'd seen her exactly like this—the long, dark hair, the smooth, olive skin and delicate oval of her face. Her expression was relaxed, serious except for the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth and in the dark eyes that gazed directly into his.
Carefully, he set the photo on the dresser-top, Jasmine's face next to his mirrored reflection. Gemma had searched this room carefully—she must have seen the photo. He wondered briefly why she hadn't shown it to him.
He finished with the dresser and the chest of drawers, looked under the bed and in the drawer of the nightstand, but found nothing else.
Returning to the sitting room, he found Sid curled up on the hospital bed's bright cotton spread. He'd seen the cat so often in the same spot, tucked into a tight, black ball against Jasmine's hip or thigh.
Kincaid sat on the edge of the bed and pushed the button to raise its head, then leaned back against the pillows. His chest ached suddenly, fiercely. He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his fingers in Sid's thick coat.
Chapter Nineteen
Meg took the baggage claim ticket from the attendant and tucked it away inside her handbag. Eighteen months of her life were contained in one battered leather suitcase and a dufflebag, now locked securely away in the railway station baggage claim. It h
ad surprised her how large and bare the bedsit looked, stripped of her meager belongings.
On her way to the station she had taken great satisfaction in posting a letter to the planning office giving her notice, but telling her landlady she was leaving hadn't quite lived up to her expectations. In fact, an expression Meg might almost have described as regret flashed across Mrs. Wilson's fleshy face before she said, "I'll not be sorry to see the back of that Roger, I can tell you. You mind my words, girl, you'll be better off without him."
Meg had come to the same conclusion herself some time ago, but doing something about it was a more difficult matter. She'd lain awake all night in the narrow bed, thinking, planning, daring to imagine a future in which she controlled her own destiny.
By morning she'd reached a decision, if only she had the courage to see it through. She knew she couldn't confront Roger alone, but face him she must. So she compromised, burning her other bridges first, making sure there could be no going back.
From the station she took the bus to Shepherd's Bush roundabout and walked the last few blocks to The Blue Angel. Roger's mate Jimmy worked in a nearby garage and Roger could often be found in the pub at Saturday lunch-time. She was counting on his pride in front of his mates keeping him from following her when she'd finished what she had to say.
Still, she hesitated outside the door of the pub, her stomach in knots, her breath coming fast. Two men barrelled out the door, nearly knocking her down. Meg stepped back, then ran her fingers through her hair and pulled open the door.
All Shall Be Well dk&gj-2 Page 20