‘What’s your last name ?’
Joey gulped it out: ‘Holden.’
Jury smiled and thought of Cody Platt. He wrote the name down, said, ‘When I get wind of the train’s actual destination, I’ll let you know. We’ll get this sorted, not to worry.’ They were moving up the aisle and Jury put his hand on Joey’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you worry; the game’s still on.’
What a willing suspension of disbelief was Joey’s! His sad look was brightened by a big smile as the three of them descended to the platform. Then Joey’s mum pulled him along, Joey pulling against her hand every dozen steps to turn and look back at Jury and wave.
In memory, Jury heard again the woman at the reception following the funeral, saying, ‘She was only your cousin; it could’ve been worse.’
Worse? No, there is no worse, unless maybe it’s on the moon.
And before King’s Cross station canceled out the night sky, he looked up and thought about the pull of the moon, the receding of tides, the place where the worst can be measured.
Ahead, the boy was little more than a stick figure. But then the figure paused, its tiny hand waving. Jury waved back.
And then he knew.
45
‘That’s impossible,’ said Macalvie, after a few moments of silence.
‘I don’t think so.’ Jury had called Macalvie as soon as he’d got back to Islington.
‘But Declan Scott surely would–?’
‘No, not necessarily. Think of Lena Banks. Scott hadn’t a clue who she was.’
‘True. But he hadn’t seen her for over a year.’ On his end, Macalvie turned from the phone to give directions to someone. He came back and said, ‘They couldn’t keep it up. Nor for all that time.’
‘I think they could.’
Again, Macalvie was silent. That was three times in one phone conversation. It had to be a record for Macalvie.
Jury said, ‘I’ll be back in Cornwall in the morning. With Cody.’ Jury smiled. It was almost as if everybody was a kid these days, doing kid things.
‘What’s going to happen?’
‘That’s my lookout.’
‘What about Cody?’
‘That’s both of ours. It’s mine for dragging him into it.’
‘When I talked to him he sure as hell didn’t sound ‘dragged’ into it. He talked about it as if it were his finest hour.’
‘Maybe it was.’
46
Pete Apted sat in his rich rosewood, mahogany, leatherlined office, finishing an apple. He was in his shirt sleeves, with his feet on the desk, and tieless, looking more like some rock group promoter than the barrister he was. Pete Apted had turned down a knighthood because (he claimed) it would make him appear unapproachable.
‘Well, you are unapproachable,’ Jury had once told him, ‘except by a few of us brave souls and the solicitors who bring you cases.’ Jury had first met up with Pete Apted through the largesse of Jenny Kennington (but that book would remain closed, which pained him), who had retained Apted to defend Jury in an absurd murder charge. And Apted had in turn defended Lady Kennington on a charge that was not absurd.
Pete Apted shied the apple core at a wastebasket strategically positioned for just that purpose. The core went in; Apted pumped his arms in victory. ‘I keep moving it back.’ He took his feet off the desk, some sort of bow to decorum. ‘Superintendent, you do have a way of turning up. Who is it this time? You? Her? Neither?’
‘Neither.’ Jury smiled. ‘Although it does involve me, but my part isn’t criminal. The girl’s name is Samantha Burns. She shot and killed a five-year-old girl.’
Nothing shocked Pete Apted, but a lot of things brought on that woeful expression. ‘Kids killing kids. Is that becoming the national pastime?’
‘She also shot a pimp named Eddie Noon. Saved my life, that did.’
‘Good for her. There’s sympathy, right there.’
‘There’s a house in Hester Street run by a woman named Murchison. Was run I should say, for she’s now in custody.’ He told Apted the story.
Pete Apted looked at him in silence for a while, said, ‘These little girls, where are they?’
‘Social services is looking after them at the moment.’ Jury hoped the girls would be kept together until something more permanent was arranged for each of them, but he supposed there wasn’t much chance of that.
‘Samantha had been in that house for how long?’
‘Since she was nine or ten.’
‘There’s even more sympathy. Now, what about you?’
‘I went in without a warrant.’
‘Oh? That was smart.’
Jury sat forward. He felt he had to explain himself to Apted; he always did. ‘This house has been under investigation for a long time. A DI named Blakeley who’s with the pedophilia unit has been trying to work up enough evidence for a warrant. He was sure, when the little girl was shot, that whoever did it came from that house. Once Blakeley managed to get into the place, but not past the Murchison woman. It’s very, very tightly run.’ Jury sat back. ‘I got in.’
‘Warrantless. None of what you discovered will fly in court, but you know that.’
‘Of course. The first order of business was getting those kids out.’
‘Exigent circumstances.’
‘But the ‘circumstances’ have been there for a long time.’
‘You didn’t know that.’ Apted got another apple out of the bag, got up and pushed the wastebasket farther back.
47
Lulu, who was tossing a ball to Roy, met up with Jury between the fountain and Melrose’s nicely turfed steps. Roy bounded ahead. ‘Hello.’ She pointed to what Jury was carrying. ‘What’s that?’
‘Mr. Plant’s gardening tool. The Black Diamond secateurs.’ Finding it to be a tool, she lost interest. Then she took Jury’s hand. ‘I was just helping with the mead planting.’
‘No you weren’t, you were playing ball, you and Roy.’ She disdained this ball playing. ‘Oh, that was only in between. Come on.’ She pulled at his hand and they walked along the path to the little interior garden. ‘See this ?’ She pointed to a deep purpleblue pansy. ‘I put this first because it’s got the most color. Then this, and this, and this.’ In turn she pointed out the paler shades, down to lavender.
Poor benighted pansies, Jury thought. Handled to within an inch of their lives. ‘That’s a pretty arrangement, but don’t you think Mr. Plant, as he’s the expert, should be permitted to keep to his own design?’
‘No.’ Lulu looked up at Jury as if she’d expected better from him. ‘His colors are all mixed up. Lie down, Roy.’
The dog paid no attention, just went on looking at them with his tongue hanging out.
Jury sat down on the bench and crossed his arms. ‘Tell me something, Lulu. Did you like Flora?’
Lulu, head down, was scuffing at the soil around the pansies.
She nodded. ‘You already asked me that.’
‘I know. But you might have changed your mind.’
She frowned. ‘Well, I haven’t. She was nice.’
‘You used to play with her at your aunt’s house in Little Comfort?’
‘Her mum brought her over.’ She stopped the scuffing and came to the bench and leaned on the arm. ‘We played cards sometimes.’
Jury sat there for a moment, his arms folded across his chest.
‘It’s been, I expect, all in all and despite what must have been the dreadful difficulty at the beginning, a lot of fun.’
She stopped swinging on the bench arm and stood still, frowning. ‘What’s been fun?’ Her tone was blank, unpuzzled and also unconvincing.
Jury opened his arms. ‘All of this: you and Roy and your aunt. Angel Gate. The gardens, the sky.’ It was a sterling blue. The place was gorgeous with the light streaming through the trees and spreading to the flower beds.
‘Oh, I don’t care,’ she said.
Had she caught on just then and, like Joey, was prepared to play it out? Jur
y smiled. Had she or hadn’t she? He felt as if he were being taken. It made him smile, really, that he was being handed a song and dance by a seven-year-old girl, that he was being hogtied, blindsided and swindled. ‘Did you usually win at cards?’
‘Always. I always won.’ Now she had grasped the arm of the bench and was leaning back.
‘You know what you should be?’
‘Uh-uh. What?’
‘A Vegas blackjack dealer.’
‘That’s funny. What is it?’
‘Well, as soon as you find out what it is, go be it because you’d be sensational. Everyone would be watching you. Las Vegas is a palace of games. You’re seven now. By the time you’re seventeen you’ll have the city at your feet.’
She looked down at her feet as if wondering whether she’d like a town at them. She pursed her lips. ‘What kind of games?’
‘The kind that require quick thinking and a poker face. The kind where you don’t give anything away.’ He leaned closer. ‘And the kind where, if you’re clever, you hedge your bets.’ Lulu was being acrobatic by turning her back to the bench and leaning over the arm, her face turned upside down. ‘I don’t know what you mean. What’s Lost Vegas?’
‘Las Vegas is a town where everyone gambles. You know, makes bets and wins a lot of money. Or loses. You can win thousands of pounds on one bet. Or lose it.’
‘Can you bet fifty p?’
‘Any amount. But what you could do is work the blackjack table. Probably, you’d want to change your name because Lulu doesn’t sound much like a Vegas name. You like French names. You named your dog ‘Roi.’ Yours could be something like Genevieve or Fleur.’
‘No. I’ve always hated that–’ Quickly, she stepped back, pressing her hands against her cheeks. Staring.
‘You’ve always hated Fleur? How’s that?’
‘You tricked me!’
Jury looked at the sky. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Entrapment, maybe.’
‘Come on, Roy! We’re going!’
Jury rose before Roy did. ‘Oh? Where are you going?’
‘To the kitchen. For our tea!’
‘May I join you?’
‘No!’ She marched off.
Roy sat looking up at Jury in an uncertain way and then took off after her.
And Jury followed.
48
Had her aunt been there in the kitchen, the child would certainly have told her–warned her–but Rebecca Owen was nowhere about. But Declan Scott and Melrose Plant were about, both standing by the sink, both drinking mugs of tea.
Declan said, ‘Mr. Jury, I’ve had Commander Macalvie on the phone. He said he was coming over from Launceston. He should be here soon.’
Melrose raised his mug in a gesture of greeting, but said nothing.
Lulu was busy shaking dog food from two boxes into Roy’s little dishes. She added what looked like scraps of scrambled egg saved from breakfast.
Melrose said, ‘The way you feed that dog, he’s going to get fat.’
‘He needs lots of food. He’s had a terrible life.’ This came from the pantry, where she was putting back the boxes.
Declan looked at Jury and rolled his eyes. ‘I wasn’t aware of that, Lulu.’ When she appeared again in the doorway, he said, ‘I assumed Roy was fortunate. At least for a dog. You got him from a litter of royal puppies, or so you said.’
She hunkered down and shoved the dish with the egg on top (which the dog had been ignoring) directly under his nose. ‘I told you that Roy was taken away by Gypsies before he hardly had a chance to see the inside of the palace.’
‘Oh, sorry, I’d forgotten that detail.’
‘Yes, you did. You probably forgot’–and here her eyes looked daggers at Declan and Melrose, with an extra jab of them at Jury-’all of it. So Roy had to go around like a beggar’s dog, hoping someone would remember.’ This was a hands-on-hips pronouncement.
‘I’m sorry, Lulu. I am. I’ll try to treat Roy with more, uh, respect in the future.’
She looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘There’s three of you. You should’ve paid more attention to him. You should have remembered. Come on, Roy!’
Roy, remembrance of his fall from grace and favor not being as high on his list as it was on Lulu’s, went on chomping his food.
‘Come on, Roy! It’s your last chance!’
Roy didn’t care anymore about last chances as he did for first.
He chewed.
Huffily, she said, ‘I’m leaving!’ and turned and stomped from the kitchen.
Declan poured the remainder of his tea down the sink and said, ‘I think I should inquire as to the source of this trouble. We might avoid a beheading.’
‘You never can tell,’ said Jury. He looked at the pot and asked, ‘Any more tea?’
‘What happened? You were out there for a good twenty minutes with Lulu,’ said Melrose.
When Jury told him, Melrose first looked astonished, but then he laughed. ‘Of course, of course. It explains a lot of things, such as why Rebecca Owen would get so anxious at some of Lulu’s remarks. Afraid she was going to give the whole thing away.’
‘I’d have been anxious, too. That little girl likes to play at the edge too much.’
Melrose said, ‘Mum and dad and auto accident, that was one expert contrivance, right down to the newspaper. I should have wondered about the next of kin.’ He shook his head.
‘Incidentally, nice work with the gun. What put you on to the garden sculpture?’
‘It was the gardener, the old one–’
‘Mr. Abbot?’
‘Yes, yes. He was nattering on about the turf and said among other things ‘fire in a bucket.’ I was standing there with that bronze sculpture in my line of vision. I guess the penny dropped.’ Jury nodded. ‘They’re running it through ballistics.’
‘About Lena Banks–’
‘Ah, yes. ‘The poor plain thing.’ You said that several times.’
‘About Lulu.’
‘That’s the point, isn’t it? It could so easily have been said about Lena Banks. How dramatically different she looked from Georgina Fox. We had to get Dennis Dench to verify that they were one and the same. It was strange–’ Jury stopped when Rebecca Owen entered the kitchen, carrying two brown sacks of groceries.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said cheerily. ‘I’ve just got back from shopping.’
Melrose went to her and took the brown bags, heavy with cans and produce. After he’d set them on the counter, he said, ‘I’m off to see my turf one last time, then it’s to Northamptonshire this afternoon.’ He finished his tea.
‘Good. I’ll hitch a ride,’ said Jury.
Rebecca scraped a lock of hair back from her forehead and said, ‘I’m so sorry you’ll be going, Mr. Plant.’
‘It’s been my pleasure, Miss Owen.’ He turned and walked out into the gardens.
She picked up the cold teapot and asked Jury, ‘Did you have tea, then? Or shall I make some fresh? I’ll do that. I’d like a cup myself.’
‘Can’t I help you with those groceries?’ Jury moved to the counter.
‘Yes, if you could just reach these ones up to that high shelf. You’re so tall. I have to get a stepladder to do it. The rest can go in that cupboard.’
He deposited cans of beets and corn on the shelf, then took the sack to the narrow cupboard by the frig. As he was carefully placing them, and without looking at her, he said, ‘Miss Owen, you haven’t been quite straight with me, have you?’ He turned and smiled at her.
She was staring at him, the tin of tea in her hand. ‘Pardon?’
‘How did Lena Banks or Viktor Baumann discover who Lulu really was?’
‘Yes, how did they?’ The new voice was Macalvie’s. He stood in the kitchen doorway, Platt and Wiggins right behind him.
She looked first at Jury, next at Macalvie, then at Platt and Wiggins. Jury thought the poor woman looked not so much anxious as heartbroken, as if she knew this day was coming, but couldn’t believe it was here
.
Macalvie went on. ‘Because we know you shot Lena Banks.’ He pulled the gun from his overcoat pocket and set it on the long table. ‘Mary Scott’s gun, isn’t it? Shooting Lena Banks, that would be the clear reason, indeed, the only reason you would have been driven to do that, to take such a hell of a chance.’
Jury put his hand under her elbow, steered her to a chair. ‘Sit down, why don’t you.’ She seated herself heavily, and he sat beside her, looking as if he too were under fire.
Macalvie waited, and when no word came from Rebecca, said, ‘She threatened to take Flora, didn’t she?’
Rebecca Owen nodded, cleared her throat, and said, ‘It was Mary’s idea. That day in London when she met Lena Banks at Brown’s. It was a kind of blackmail, really; the Banks woman said that for a considerable sum she might be able to keep Viktor Baumann from doing something about Flora.’
‘‘Something’ meaning what?’
‘She didn’t say; it was an insinuation. ‘Something’ probably like what was supposed to have happened–abduction. Ironically, it was what police thought he had done. Mary was terrified also because she had this heart condition and if she were to die, there’d be nothing to stop Viktor Baumann from gaining custody of Flora. After all, he was her father. Mary would have paid up if she’d had the money. The woman wanted half a million pounds, she said. So that day in Heligan Gardens Mary told Flora that I was to pick her up and take her to Little Comfort and she, Mary, would see her that evening and explain it all. Just to go with me and be a good girl. I went to the Crystal Grotto and kept out of sight–there were very few people there–until I saw the two of them. I changed her blue coat for a brown one and put a scarf round her head and we left by way of one of the service roads. It’s the way I got in. If any of the people working there saw us, we wouldn’t be able to go through with the kidnapping story, of course. We’d have to wait awhile and try something else.’
‘Flora wasn’t bothered by this. She has an amazing presence of mind for a child. She’s really very strong.’
The Winds of Change Page 31