by Morag Joss
‘Well, in the first place it’s unlikely he intended to kill her. You wouldn’t choose a passageway in a pub as the ideal murder location, would you? He probably lost his temper, though that said, it’s an oddity that he went as far as he did with the strangulation. She’d have been unconscious long before she was dead and that’s usually when an abusive husband stops. So he probably wouldn’t have been trying to stay inconspicuous before he met her. There’s security video footage from the town and the railway station to go through, and we’re putting out appeals for information. People who were in the area from eight or nine o’clock onwards and may have seen him.’
‘So—a swarthy photograph in the paper, then?’
‘Oh no,’ Andrew said, sounding almost shocked. ‘That’d screw us up completely. We might want to do an ID parade, and that’d be out of the question if a photograph had been published earlier. You can see why.’
‘I thought you told me identity parades were a nightmare?’
‘They are, they are. And this one will be worse than most.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I’m bored stiff talking about it,’ Andrew announced, rousing himself. ‘And because it’s a nightmare getting enough volunteers together, and then your suspect doesn’t show up, any number of things go wrong, whatever. Anyway, it may not even happen. We need witnesses first, people who think they saw someone answering Takahashi’s description at or near Green Street before ten o’clock that day. A long shot. Oh God, look,’ he groaned, pointing outside.
An eager, wet face was peering in at them, bouncing up and down, its indecently pink tongue lolling. ‘Just as well we kept our clothes on, then,’ Sara said dolefully. ‘We wouldn’t want to embarrass Pretzel, would we?’
‘I hate you,’ Andrew said conversationally to the dog as he opened the door to let him in. ‘I hate you because wherever you are, Joyce is never far behind. Ah, Joyce! There you are!’ he called. ‘Up here! We were just wondering where you were, weren’t we, Sara?’
As they stood together watching Joyce struggle up the slippery path to the hut Sara whispered, ‘Let’s go to bed really early. At least she can’t follow us there’
Andrew squeezed her hand. He had been saving until the last possible moment the news that he was babysitting his children that night because Valerie, once again at deliberately short notice, had decided she needed an evening out.
CHAPTER 15
BY THREE O’CLOCK on Thursday James, lying up at the top of the Sulis garden in the deep of the afternoon and surrounded by flowers and summer bird-song, felt he had read enough Coleridge to be able to appreciate that
—far and near,
In wood and thicket, over the wide grove
They answer and provoke each other’s song,
with skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug jug
but he didn’t because in his exhausted stomach there was so much skirmish and capricious passaging that it felt as though someone with a pickaxe and a grudge was down there breaking boulders. After he had left his message on Sara’s mobile he had tried to make himself relax by listening to the birdsong tinkling down from the high trees that bordered the clinic grounds, but had fallen instead into an agitated and distressing half-dream in which he was losing control of a masterclass made up of fledglings in velvet hairbands falling out of their nests. ‘No! Come on! Give me swift jug jug jug, not pring pring! Get back in your nests! Sit up straight!’ Shaking himself into wakefulness he tried to remember what he had been learning in the yoga class about relaxation and a sense of harmony with oneself and with the natural world. But all he could hear in the calling of the birds was a restless lament for how things ought to be but were not. Coleridge’s Poetical Works lay open across his chest. The book on naturopathy lay on the ground beside him open at the page headed Health Is A Matter Of Nutrition.
It was a pity that Health seemed also to be a Matter Of Sharing A Dining Room With Intolerable People although, to be fair to them, James admitted to himself that had the food been more enjoyable and sustaining, the company of the others round the oval table at lunch would have been, too. The dining room itself was superb, another high-ceilinged room with full-length windows on two sides, carpeted in pale grey and with hand-painted murals depicting some kind of eighteenth century carnival with horse races. Parts of lunch had been good: the different kinds of lettuce, chervil, parsley and rocket had been wonderfully fresh, which was not to say they would not have been better with garlic mayonnaise. The carrot, courgette and tomato bake, with shredded raw cabbage, celery and cucumbers had also been very nice, though how much of such stuff could a person be expected to eat? The bread, a mixed grain slab with a crust like pebble dash, James had judged about as rewarding as eating eggboxes. And that, along with all the water he could drink, had been it. Where was his lump of Stilton? The smoked ham, the shavings of parmesan? The marinaded anchovies, the oil, the butter?
James had watched his four fellow patients approach their lunch with the solemnity of communicants.
‘Isn’t he a genius?’ rasped the old woman sitting opposite. When no one had replied, she had turned to the man on her left, with the cravat tucked into the neck of his towelling robe, who had been staring at his plate. ‘Warwick, don’t you agree he’s a genius? Ivan. He’s a genius. With food.’
Warwick, still chewing, considered. ‘Oh absolutely. Though truth to tell, Bunny, I don’t go such a bundle on the raw stuff,’ he said. ‘And the bread’s a bit heavy.’ Sensing the old lady’s dismay at the criticism he added, ‘Oh, it’s meant to be, one appreciates that. Full of cereals.’ He picked up the untouched chunk of bread on his plate and weighed it in the palm of his hand. ‘Rather filling, that’s all. In fact, I think I’ll keep mine for later. As is my wont.’ Smiling with faint embarrassment, he wrapped the bread in his paper napkin and pocketed it.
The old lady nodded in the general direction of Warwick’s dressing-gown pocket and said, ‘I hope you’re not skipping it. You must be sure you eat it. Everything’s worked out for nutritional balance. It’s a daily requirement.’ Turning to James she said, ‘Ivan and his father work it all out. Dr Golightly insists we eat well, whatever we’re in for. Get the fuel right and the body will rejuvenate itself, you see. Better than a whole handful of antibiotics. I see you’ve eaten yours. Have you a troublesome gut?’
James was saved from having to reply by Warwick, who seemed anxious to convince that he was a true disciple. ‘Oh, goodness me yes, Bunny’s right. Solid goodness. Goes through the colon like a bottle-brush. I’ll eat mine later, you see. I often get peckish around three o’clock.’
A little silence had then settled over the table, during which the old lady’s jowls had fallen, rather miraculously, even further. As James looked at the other two patients who had so far said nothing, one of them, a big-boned, gentle-faced woman with hair the colour of parsnips, raised her eyes and met his look. She was chewing bravely, while tears gathered in her large green eyes.
‘Oh Jane,’ the old woman said. ‘What’s set you off this time? Not talking about food, surely?’
Jane shook her head and tears splashed on to her plate. ‘Nothing. It’s just—’ The word ‘just’ had proved difficult to say with a mouthful of the challenging bread. She swallowed inelegantly and gave a little nod of apology to everyone. ‘I was just thinking about my wedding. Today’s our anniversary. I can’t help it, it’s my first as a … as a divorcée. It just reminded me. You see, it was three o’clock when we got married.’ Confident of her charm, she trailed off into a pretty little sniff. Even her voice had been blonde, James thought as he remembered it, this seeming to him a charitable way to describe her tone of soft-brained inconsequentiality.
Nobody had known what to reply, perhaps because if something as innocuous as three o’bloody clock in the afternoon was too charged with painful meaning to be mentioned then it was surely dangerous to say anything else.
Warwic
k had resumed the earlier, less hazardous topic. ‘Well, well. Nutrition’s vital, of course. But you know me, Bunny. The creative therapy’s the thing. Therapeutic self-expression—that’s more me. That’s my saviour, not the rabbit food.’
This remark stirred the other man, who had hairless pink hands and the face of a middle-aged cod, into speech. ‘Oh yes. Therapeutic’s right. You’re all right, you lot are, with Hilary,’ he said, in a reverential Welsh accent. He turned to James. ‘They’re all right. Doing art. They get Hilary, the art therapist. Attractive woman. Only I can’t really get on with the clay, not like these two. Dries my hands out, you see.’
James murmured with what he considered the minimum acceptable level of feigned interest, but the Welshman wet his lips and continued. ‘Now the music therapy, I could have got on with that. Bit of a singer at one time, actually. I auditioned for the Swingle Singers once. I could have done with the music therapy, only there’s none. She’s left, the music therapist. Didn’t tell me that when I booked, though.’ He sat back and pursed his lips. ‘I’m negotiating a refund,’ he said importantly.
‘There are plenty of other things you could do instead,’ Bunny said, peering frostily along the table, ‘only you don’t. You could paint but you don’t. You don’t even swim. You just fall asleep by the pool in between massages. I think you’re very unfair.’ She glared at James as if to warn him that it would be intolerably bad form to side with the Welshman, who had now grown pink in the face.
‘Rest is a fundamental need for my condition,’ he pouted, and fell silent.
Warwick patted his sides. ‘Results speak for themselves, don’t they?’ There was a murmur from the others. ‘Anyway, it’s the whole shebang, isn’t it?’ he went on, trying to draw them together. ‘Diet, rest, self-expression. Physical and mental. The whole thing.’
The blonde woman, Jane, added, ‘Yoga, hydrotherapy, massage, posture, breathing,’ counting them off on lilac-painted talons. Her contribution over and clearly not expecting a reply, she had risen with a cool smile and swayed from the room as slinkily as her lumpy robe allowed. The Welshman’s hungry eyes tracked her working buttocks until they disappeared behind the door and then he, presumably in obedience to some doomed libidinal impulse, had got up and followed.
‘Ivan is a genius, anyway,’ asserted the old woman, back on the subject with which she seemed to be successfully emptying the room. She pulled a reptilian hand from somewhere inside her towelling folds and held it out to James, displaying several rings as gnarled as her fingers.
‘Mrs Bunny Fernandez,’ she said. She leaned across the table and offered with the hand a close-up of her heavily made-up cheeks and a smiling top row of tea-coloured teeth. The black eyelashes flailing in the chalky face made James think of two spiders trapped in setting cement.
‘James Ballantyne,’ he said.
‘Detoxification,’ she replied.
Warwick leaned towards James. ‘Bunny’s a big fan,’ he said. ‘Comes every year. Three weeks of organic food, rest, art therapy, swears by it, don’t you, Bunny?’
‘Detoxification. Every August,’ she assented graciously. James murmured with the impressed tone that was clearly expected. ‘Essential,’ she went on, ‘for rejuvenation. I’m seventy-nine, you know.’
She certainly did not look that. James had put her closer to ninety.
‘Warwick Jones,’ the face above the cravat was saying. ‘Practically indestructible, in need of pepping up.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Somewhat weakened constitution, you see, once the Japs had finished with me.’ He coughed to indicate that no answer was necessary.
‘Warwick’s liver is a battlefield,’ Bunny said, importantly. ‘He won’t mind me saying. And you?’
James had been saved from having to return the confidence and mention his bowels by the sudden reminder they had at that moment given him of their presence. Whether it was the food or the conversation that had caused them to reconsider their strategy of refusing to budge for an average of four days at a time, however much James besieged them with fig and senna extract, they had clearly resolved after forty-eight hours at the Sulis to abandon that tactic and go for complete evacuation. He had left the dining room very quickly.
* * *
WITHOUT REALISING that he had been asleep, James now awoke with a few seconds’ disorientated puzzlement about why there should be giant birds wearing glasses in his bedroom. He was still under the gazebo at the top of the garden. Stretching, he felt grateful for the sleep even though it had brought unpleasantly vivid dreams. His stomach still groaned painfully but he supposed, reviewing his mood and trying once more to ignore the birds, which at least had returned to their normal size and were back up in the trees, that he had felt worse before he came here. Picking up the Coleridge again, he leafed through it. How sweet, typical and nuts of Tom to stick this and other volumes of poetry in his luggage. You’re not to read fiction, he had said. You get too involved, you know you do. I know you can’t empty your mind, so at least fill it with poetry. The book had fallen open at Kubla Khan, the only Coleridge that James until that afternoon had ever read, apart from the Ancient Mariner.
In consequence of a slight indisposition an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effect of which the Author fell asleep in his chair at the moment he was reading. The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he had the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than two to three hundred lines. Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him.
James smiled to himself as his eyes skated through the poem, trying to picture the gardens bright, the incense-bearing trees and sunny spots of greenery that had danced through Coleridge’s brain during that prosaic-sounding afternoon nap. When Sara arrived he must ask if she could get hold of some Anodyne for him. He could do with a little milk of paradise, he reflected, as his stomach rumbled agreement.
CHAPTER 16
ANDREW DECIDED IN the end to submit with grace to the suggestion that he see Joyce back to Medlar Cottage, remembering Sara’s own grace at being deserted for babysitting the night before. The three of them were standing in the entrance lobby of the police station. Sara was still holding her mobile phone. It was not usual, he had suggested mildly, for a chief inspector to drive witnesses around.
‘Well no, but you know Joyce, don’t you. She’d be happier. Sorry … only you see James has left this message. He’s in the Sulis and he’s practically demanding I go and see him. I’ve got to go, I really have. You will see Joyce home, won’t you? Joyce, he’ll get you back in time for your rest. Be nice to each other. I really must go.’
Distracted, she had gone, leaving Andrew looking at Joyce and wondering if he could find it in himself to think of her as some kind of irresponsible child or animal, something unlovable with hideous habits and redeeming qualities so deeply buried that one simply had to trust that they were there. Sara had brought her to Manvers Street Police Station to make her statement about the events in the Snake and Ladder on the previous Saturday. Joyce had repeated her story loftily although with perfect consistency to Bridger, altering nothing except perhaps the height of her contempt for the entire process. She continued to claim that the doors of the cupboard in the pub corridor had been closed. Somehow, on her way back from the lavatory the woman had just fallen out on top of her.
Eight days of daily baths, a good bed, Sara’s careful cooking and no booze had restored in Joyce not just some physical condition but also a disproportionate amourpropre. It was extraordinary, Andrew had observed to himself, that such a scrag end of womanhood, barely five feet tall, could survey a roomful of police officers as if from a height. She managed to make you feel that she was inspecting you from a balcony.
But he would submit with grace. Grace in the immediate circumstances was appropriate, Andrew reminded himself as he smiled at
Joyce, because later on he had every intention of getting Sara away from Medlar Cottage for a night. Ordinarily he might, despite the wary liking he had developed for James, have slightly resented Sara’s rushing off so full of concern for somebody else, especially since this now meant breaking up his afternoon with a drive out to St Catherine’s Valley to deposit Joyce. But he would submit with—had he thought grace? It was more like delirious joy, because he was already planning the evening.
‘Right, then, your ladyship,’ he said, determined not to be discouraged by Joyce’s unsmiling eyes, ‘your carriage awaits. Shall we?’ He opened the heavy glass door of the police station with a facetious flourish, making a face to the desk sergeant behind the glass partition as Joyce scuttled under his raised arm into the sunshine outside.
They sat for a long time in a traffic queue in Walcot Street. Joyce and Andrew watched inexpressively without speaking as people went by, up and down the pavement next to the flea market, crossing the road in front of the stopped car with pedestrians’ smiles, betraying their pleasure in having a practical advantage, as well as moral superiority, over mugs stuck in cars. Most were carrying, or displaying on stalls, the kinds of things that Walcot Street sold: pots, pictures and frames (sometimes together), bags and rolls of curtains and clothes, hangings, candlesticks, urns, fireplaces and objects that fell into no category except that of things to buy for a bit more than they were worth, put somewhere, look at for a bit and then go off. And it seemed that everything traded in Walcot Street, if not actually antique or second-hand, had been duffed up and rubbed down in order to look so. The people too, many of whom were young, had apparently been duffed up and rubbed down with the result that they also looked if not older then slightly thumbed. They were wearing clothes that were either so huge or so tiny that their bodies were swamped or barely covered. That, together with a soft look of benign puzzlement on their faces created the lovable impression that the dear things hadn’t quite got the hang of finding the right sizes. Hair of varying styles and colours was on the whole odd or impractical, if not absent. Andrew smiled. Natalie would be among this lot in a few years’ time. He made a mental note not to shout when she got her first navel piercing.