Baumann killed a little time opening a case and taking out glasses that Jury bet he didn’t need. He wrapped the thin pliable stems round his ears and looked at the picture. His reaction was one of astonishment. It was fairly convincing, Jury thought. Baumann was a good actor.
‘I know this woman, Superintendent, either that or someone who could be her twin.’
‘And this someone is Georgina Fox?’
‘No, no. That’s just it. The woman I know is Lena Banks.’
‘Lena Banks?’
‘Yes. I don’t understand this.’ He did not return the snapshot to Jury, but laid it carefully on the comer of his desk and looked bemused. ‘You say she and Declan Scott were lovers?’
‘Lovers, yes, for a short time. I’m sorry, but is this Banks woman a particular friend of yours?’ He watched Baumann’s expression.
How much to tell? How much to hide? Baumann was quick.
‘I, uh, thought so.’ He smiled, as if whatever the relationship, it wouldn’t stand up to this. ‘But what I can’t get over is this Fox woman. If this is indeed Lena Banks, why would she present herself to Scott under a false name?’
Jury wanted to. say, Why would she present herself at all? ‘Good question. How well’do you know her?’
‘Lena Banks? She’s a good friend of mine.., well, we’re lovers, actually. I’ve known her for years.’
Jury reached for the picture. ‘Assuming she is passing herself off as Georgina Fox, does she have form, Mr. Baumann?’
‘Pardon?’
‘A police record.’
Baumann’s laugh was short. ‘Good lord, I hope not. But how did you come by her picture?’ He inclined his head toward the snapshot.
‘Chance.’ Jury reclaimed it, put it in his pocket. ‘One of my colleagues had a file on her. She must have something to do with the pedophilia unit. It’s DI Blakeley who had it.’
‘Yes, I believe I’ve met Inspector Blakeley.’
‘He heads up the unit.’ Jury shrugged. ‘Better him than me, I say. It makes me tired–all of the time and manpower spent on something that’s simply a matter of taste.’
Baumann paused in the act of lighting a cigar and gave an abrupt laugh. ‘That’s damned peculiar coming from a policeman.’
‘Sorry if it offends you.’ Jury smiled; it took a lot out of him to do it.
Cigar lit, Baumann sat back, rocked a little in his chair and said, ‘No. It’s not offensive. Then you don’t consider it aberrant behavior?’
‘No more than being gay is.’ Jury knew he was being studied, being assessed as Baumann’s eyes measured him.
Baumann leaned forward, spoke in a confidential tone. ‘What people like Inspector Blakeley can’t understand is that it’s about love, not abuse. We’ve all had experience hugging children, cuddling them, kissing them and that’s deemed perfectly natural. So why is it unnatural to take this affection–to extend this affection?’
Jury kept his face as blank as possible, cleared his mind as if he were shoving images, like furniture, about so he wouldn’t fall over them, so he wouldn’t reach over, grab this guy by his necktie and choke him. What amazed him was that Baumann, a shrewd businessman, didn’t seem to realize that he was as good as admitting to being a pedophile. Or if he was not a pedophile himself, not one of them, he was certainly espousing their propaganda. Why else would he want to justify it? Nor did he seem to care Jury was there for an entirely different purpose than Flora’s abduction. Which had been Jury’s intention. He said, ‘Now obviously, if a child is taken against his or her will, no, that shouldn’t happen.’
‘I couldn’t agree more. And if the bastard who took Flora is ever found, I’ll kill him myself.’ Baumann made little jabs toward Jury with his cigar by way of punctuating what he said.
Jury drew out his small notebook and thumbed up a few pages and came to a blank one that he pretended to read. ‘A chief inspector with the Devon and Cornwall police, Macalvie–’
‘Macalvie? I had a stomach full of that one.’
‘We always look, you understand, at family members first, especially when there’s been a custody battle.’
‘I wouldn’t refer to it as a ‘battle,’ Superintendent. On Mary’s side, it was. But she was being utterly unreasonable.’
‘Sympathy goes out to the mother always in such circumstances.’
‘Mary has always been able to elicit sympathy.’
‘When Flora disappeared, did you go to Cornwall?’
‘Police contacted me hours after she was abducted. City police turned up on my doorstep, said the Devon and Cornwall police asked them to come round to see me. They questioned me for an hour, asking pretty much the same thing in fifty different ways: how I felt about the custody hearing and about my wife’s remarrying.’ He sat back, pulled down his waistcoat and looked, for some reason, pleased with himself, as if simply putting up with the police was some cause for self-satisfaction ‘No, I didn’t go to Cornwall. Couldn’t see the purpose in doing it.’
No, thought Jury, he wouldn’t, since the only thing of importance was himself and not the desperate plight of a woman he had once professed to love.
Baumann puffed at his cigar. ‘This Scott–I take it he’s landed gentry? What does he do? Nothing, probably.’
‘I expect he doesn’t have to. Not like us poor sods who have to work for a living.’
Apparently liking the description of himself—of them–as poor sods, Baumann laughed. ‘I can see you’re a man after my own heart.’
Jury nearly bit his tongue. But it must have been this inference on the part of Viktor Baumann that Jury was on his wavelength that made him forget he was talking, after all, to a CID detective.
‘Mr. Baumann, thanks very much for letting me take up your time. I appreciate it.’
Baumann walked him to the door. ‘Anytime, Superintendent. Anytime.’
Jury was directed to the rest room by the secretary, surprised he had kept Viktor Baumann from his appointments this long, rather like a gladiator waiting for a thumbs-up.
28
On his way back to Tower Hill and the tube Jury turned off Fenchurch Street and walked toward Lower Thames Street. In one of the little streets he passed he saw the new office block that had been built on the site where the Blue Last had stood before a bomb wiped it out in the war. He thought the pub was as embedded in his consciousness now as it was in the members of the family who had owned it. Some had died in the blast; some were still alive.
He was taking the same route he’d taken on those few occasions he’d gone to the Snow Hill station of the City police. That had been to see Mickey. And then he was thinking about Liza and the kids and knew it was not a good route to take.
Better to bypass the Liberty Bounds too for the same reason.
But he didn’t. It was noon and he wanted a drink and maybe a meal the same as anyone.
The Liberty Bounds was a very large pub and at lunchtime crowded, though it was on the early side for lunch. Jury took a place at the bar and ordered a bottle of Adnam’s. He got the bottle instead of draft for a change, mostly because he liked to pick labels off beer bottles.
He drank and thought and picked at the Adnam’s label. He took out the police photo of this still nameless woman and knew that she didn’t exist. Oh, she was flesh and blood—dead flesh–but she had existed really as someone else, a someone certainly missing. They’d been looking for the wrong woman. Except for Mary Scott and Dora Stout, she had appeared to few people in the guise of this woman in the picture. Staff at Brown’s–the concierge, perhaps; the waiter who’d brought the drinks–but hardly anyone else. For she looked so unremarkable, who would remember? Smoke and mirrors. Right now, he looked in the one above the bar. Same face, same expression he saw in his bathroom mirror.
Same eyes, same hair, same–
He looked at the photo of the dead woman again. So unremarkable, who would remember? But everybody had who had seen her. What was so memorable was that she wasn’t. W
hat was so memorable was her astonishing plainness.
That, on the other side of the coin–he yanked out the album and Lena Banks’s picture. On the other side of the coin might be astonishing beauty.
Jury took out his cell phone. Dead. He had forgotten to recharge it again. He asked the bartender where the phone was and was pointed upstairs. He climbed the stairs, feeling a slowness come to him that hadn’t been there yesterday.., oh, for God’s sakes, move, and he took the remaining steps two at a time.
The final brr-brr of his telephone sounded just as Brian Macalvie unlocked the front door. He picked up the receiver. Dead. He tossed his keys onto the small table by the entrance and went to his kitchen, where he pulled a bottle of beer from the pristine environment of the frig (there being nothing else in it except milk for his tea) and continued on his way to the bedroom.
He flopped on the bed, drank the beer and tried both to think about and not think about the case. It had been bad enough the first time with the disappearance of little Flora; now it was worse because he would also have to feel the failure of the first time and that the failure had brought murder with it this time.
He took another pull at the bottle of beer and thought about Declan Scott. He would have to go to Angel Gate. The more he thought about what he believed, the more he believed it. It made sense. The first person one suspects is a family member.
Macalvie lay there, drinking his beer, looking at the ceiling.
Now he thought of Cassie. When he got to that godforsaken cottage in the Fleet Valley, he found she had been shot such a little time before that the milk in her cereal bowl was bright with cold.
Nor had the shooter even granted her the mercy of not seeing it coming. No, she had to watch the gun come up and point. But the lack of mercy was not really directed at her. It was aimed at Macalvie and it was such a brilliant stroke of revenge, shooting the little girl and having him find her he couldn’t summon up anything worse.
It was because of him she had been stolen, because of him she had been shot.
At least (and it was certainly the very least, and no comfort) her mother knew what had happened.
The phone started in ringing again. He should answer it. He didn’t.
He pulled his arm up over his eyes and tried not to think of Cassie and found Cassie was all he could think of, sitting there with a bullet in her and in her eyes that look of fright.
29
On that cold night, Declan Scott looked up from the little photo album. He said nothing, but seemed to be waiting for Jury to explain what he could never explain himself: that Georgina Fox was not Georgina Fox. That she was Lena Banks.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jury. ‘There’s not much worse than finding someone you loved is a lie. I don’t know any other way to put it.’ Declan almost laughed. He moved from the fireplace where he’d been standing, looking at the album, to the wing chair opposite Jury. He tossed the album on the table between them, drank his whiskey and looked across the blue-green sea of carpet. He shook his head, again in disbelief. ‘Don’t feel bad, Superintendent. I’m not hurt; I’m just amazed. This murdered woman is Georgina?’
‘Lena Banks.’
Declan shook his head, then ran the heel of his hand across his forehead. ‘I was never really in love with her, it was feeling so empty after Mary’s death, if you know what I mean. You look as if you do.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t think anyone can take Mary’s place. I really loved her.’
It was such a simple declaration. And Jury supposed it was bad news for Patricia Quint. ‘No woman has to take her place. You just carve out another place.’
Declan smiled. ‘Of course, you’re right.’ He leaned over and flipped the album open. ‘What did you say her name really is?’
‘Lena Banks.’
‘Lena Banks.’ Declan rested his head on the back of the chair.
‘Paris. I guess it’s dangerous to go to Paris in the state of mind I was in.’
‘Anyplace would have been dangerous.’
‘Lena Banks.’ As if repeating it often enough might dispel the smoke. ‘It was all the effect of depression, emptiness, hopelessness. Failure. I really felt I’d failed Mary in not being able to get Flora back.’
‘How could you possibly? You didn’t know why she was taken and there wasn’t a footprint to lead anyone anywhere, to point anyone in any direction. No calls, no ransom demands. Nothing. If it was failure, then failure was inevitable.’ Jury leaned toward him, this man had gone through enough without being a pawn in one of Baumann’s games. ‘Listen: I want you to tell me whatever you told Lena Banks–or Georgina Fox. You talked to her about Mary and Flora, you must have.’
Declan nodded, his hand shading his eyes as if he were ashamed of the memory.
Jury said, ‘Why wouldn’t you? Talking about it probably eased the pain a little. It usually does.’
‘Ordinarily I’m reticent about my feelings. Sometimes I think I’m stuck in the past because of that. Or it’s the other way round: I don’t want to let the feelings go, so I hang on to the past.’ Jury looked around the room, its outer edges in near darkness.
The angel on the mantel with shaded eyes looked composed but almost desperately so, like Declan Scott.
‘My mother used to tell me I’m the youngest old fuddy-duddy she knows. But I think she appreciated that Mary didn’t want to make any big changes to the house. She had the nursery painted yellow for Flora and that was the extent of any sort of transformation.’
Jury leaned toward him. ‘What did you tell Lena Banks about Flora?’
Declan sat back. ‘I talked a lot about her. Georgina–I mean, Lena–listened. She was, she said, appalled by what had happened and asked if I suspected anyone. I said, yes. Flora’s father. He was a man with a lot of power and used to getting his own way–a megalomaniac, from what I’d heard–and he was the most likely person to have done it, or had it done. She thought it strange that there was no ransom demand. I agreed, but not if the father was the guilty party. ‘If he was,’ she said, ‘wouldn’t he have been clever enough to ask for money?’ I admitted there was truth in that. Or of course it could have been some complete stranger, someone who wanted a child. We talked about this off and on for the weeks I knew her. You’re right, it did help a little. I wondered, though, why she was so very interested in Flora’s kidnapping. I hardly know what to call it anymore. Yes, I did wonder. Anyway, then she was gone, without a word.’
‘She was gone because you convinced her you didn’t know what had happened to Flora.’
Declan looked puzzled.
‘She was sent by Baumann to find out what you knew.’
‘You mean he thought I had her?’
‘Or knew where she was. That he had Lena Banks strike up a relationship with you certainly indicates that. Remember, with Flora’s mother gone, he’d have custody.’
‘I see what you mean.’ Wearily, Declan leaned his head against the back of the wing chair. The fire had died down and his face was half in shadow. ‘Now we’re left with the unknown person who might have taken Flora for any number of reasons. I don’t want to think about that. I wish it had been for money; I almost wish Viktor Baumann had taken her.’
‘Believe me, you don’t.’
Declan sat up and looked at Jury, eyebrows raised.
‘Viktor Baumann, among other things, caters for pedophiles.’
Declan was almost out of his chair. ‘What?’
‘A colleague of mine has been keeping Baumann in his sights for a long time. He–Baumann–has set up house in North London where he traffics in little kids. Girls anywhere from four years old into their early teens. There are never fewer than ten little girls there.’
The blood drained from Declan’s face. ‘You’re not suggesting Flora–’ He stopped.
‘Probably not, but anyone who’s such a moral blank card as Viktor wouldn’t stick at using his own child.’
‘But when they–Mary and Flora–were living with him–’ Again he stop
ped as if words were hardly up to carrying this sort of meaning and weight.
‘Oh, not then. I very much doubt it. Her mother was there, after all. And Flora would have been too young.’ If there was, thought Jury, such a thing as ‘too young’ for these people.
‘Wait a minute, though.’ Declan shifted to the edge of his chair. ‘Awhile ago you said that Lena Banks was trying to find out Flora’s whereabouts and if that was so, it indicates Baumann didn’t do it. ‘Indicates,’ doesn’t mean ‘proves.’ Can you be sure he doesn’t have her?’
‘No, not absolutely.’
Declan set his head in his hands as if he were examining his own skull. ‘Don’t tell me this; don’t tell me this.’
‘I’m not; I’m not telling you this. I think there’s very little chance that Viktor Baumann has Flora. He wouldn’t have set Lena Banks on you if he had.’ Jury wished he was convinced of this.
‘If that was the reason for her attaching herself to me.’
‘Possibly. Or it could be simpler; it could be she was really in love with you. In case you saw her now, though, she wouldn’t want you to recognize her.’
Declan did not look up. He said through his interwoven fingers, ‘Mary and I had been married such a short time, but even so, I really felt Flora was like my own child.’
‘I know.’ Jury rose. ‘I need to stop at the police van.’ Declan got up, too, but rather slowly, as if the conversation had aged him. ‘You’ll want to go out by the French doors behind us and through the gardens. It’s quicker. Thanks for coming here first, Superintendent. It was very kind of you.’
‘I just wish what I had to say could have been kinder.’ As he walked Jury to the doors, Declan said, ‘No, in one way it helped, finding out the truth usually does, doesn’t it?’ Jury stopped on the dark patio, looked up at the stars and wanted to say No, give me lies any day, just let me get through one day without bad news. ‘Yes, I guess it does, Mr. Scott. Good night.’ He raised his hand in a good-bye gesture and walked off into the garden.
The Winds of Change Page 19