Laura had been waylaid by a gang of old dears who, if previous experience was anything to go by, would soon have her trapped in a mobile clinic, asking her advice on various aches and pains. She would doubtless give it, in spite of having problems of her own. The heels on the silly shoes were sinking into the lawn and on the fifth or sixth occasion she took them off and stuffed them into her handbag. And still remained one of the tallest people at the party.
She was a good eight inches taller than our host, Rollo Leveque. He was a man of several faces, by which I mean the mouth and chin didn’t quite seem to be from the same mould as the cheeks and pronounced nose. The forehead and hair were different again and the overall impression, though inoffensive enough, was of a Mediterranean mish-mash. He was cruising the assembled company, glancing at his watch occasionally, counting down the minutes to the scheduled end of the party - 6.00 pm according to the invitation. His face re-configured when he spotted me, genial host became anxious witness to something he wished he hadn’t seen.
He came over to where I was talking to Martin Falconer and his new passion, name of Gabrielle I believe.
“Excuse me, you are the doctor’s, er...” Rollo began.
“Fella?” I said.
He smiled. “Well, yes. Rollo Leveque.”
“Nathan Hawk.”
I was about to introduce Martin and his girlfriend but Rollo clearly knew one of them well and wasn’t especially interested in the other.
“This is Jenny’s idea, all of this,” he said, gesturing round. “A motley crew. I don’t recognise half the faces.” He snapped his fingers in minor triumph. “Hawk! Got you! My apologies. My friend John Stillman, every time we meet he speaks of you...”
Finding the body of John Stillman’s missing daughter was my second case after leaving the police and moving to this part of the world.
“How is he?” I asked.
“Jen and I are off to the Bahamas, couple of weeks time. Nicholls Town. I invited him to join us, but no...” He shook his head and smiled with affection. “He is a lonely man. He says he likes it that way. I don’t believe him. But, then, after losing so much...”
I nodded and we fell silent, brought down a notch or two by recalling the tragedy which had befallen our mutual friend. Rollo looked over at the string quartet.
“I’m going to get those buggers to play something jolly, not this funereal crap.”
It was in moments like this, when he was irritated or slightly put out, that the Chancery Lane accent slipped, betraying the Frenchman underneath. He stomped over to the quartet and within minutes the musical menu had changed, the mood had lifted from dirge to singalong, though nobody sang. Laura had escaped from her mobile clinic and came over to size up ... I’m pretty sure the name was Gabrielle. There’ve been two or three others since.
It was another half hour before I spoke to Rollo again, by which time he’d drunk enough for his discomfort about the party to have washed away. He’d seen me looking up at the crenelated guttering. In Frank’s day a falling chunk of it was as likely to kill you as carry rain away but Rollo had restored it to within an inch of its life.
“How many rooms do you have?” I asked.
He wasn’t sure. I explained that his predecessors, the Cornells, lived in just six.
“You knew them? Knew the place?” he asked. “Then let me show you round, see the changes we’ve made.”
It was a genuine offer, appealing to my connection with the house, not simply a chance to show me his wealth.
He walked me round to the front door. Doors, I should say, made of oak with a coat of arms that said something in French. They opened with noiseless ease, just as they do at most supermarkets, and he led the way in. The hall, along with the rest of the house, was unrecognisable but for all its attention to detail and undoubted craftsmanship it struck me as a heartless place, a far cry from the living, breathing, crumbling ruin I remembered. For all its likeness to a Disney palace, hand woven this, charcoal forged that, diamond studded the other, it had somehow ... ceased to exist.
We started on the uppermost floor, at the top of a wide sweep of shallow stairs. He spread his arms wide, a gesture to give me a choice of which direction to go in, though I suspected there’d be more to the left than bedroom, more to the right than bathroom. I looked up.
“Attic,” said Rollo. “Court papers, transcriptions, toys, old furnitures...”
He would’ve extended the list had I not winced in empathy. Rich crap, poor crap, it’s all rubbish, all destine for landfill in the end. Once I’d marvelled at the bedrooms we dawdled our way downwards via private gymnasium, gun room, music room, pool room, cinema, kitchen, library, swimming pool and wound up at a recently consecrated chapel and as every door opened so I expressed my ... amazement. It was the kind which could be taken either way: as wonderment or schlock-horror. And as I stood at the altar of this miniature Canterbury cathedral, asking myself where even a London barrister gets enough money to re-jig a 17th century mansion, Rollo said with quiet intensity,
“I hate the fucking place, truth be told.” I turned to him. “Not just this chapel. The whole house.”
He wasn’t just apologising for being obscenely rich, the stillness in his face said he meant it.
“Why did you bother?”
“I needed a project, I suppose. I always need a project. With details, details, details, so that I can fill my head with getting them right.” He smiled. “I’m also pissed.”
He regretted the confession and in the silence which followed we both heard the string quartet sink back to its unhappy repertoire. He smiled, the bottom half of his face only.
“Let’s get those buggers to play a bit of ... I dunno, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Status Quo? You and I’ll do the vocals.”
“Whatever you want,” I said.
***
Outside in the garden the party was still going strong and Rollo braced himself as he saw his wife tacking across the lawn in our direction. Jenny Leveque was an attractive woman in a strung out sort of way, early forties, tall, auburny hair with huge eyes, made to appear the more so by powerful glasses. She had curiously long arms, I noticed, constantly on the move as if awaiting their chance to break away from her body. She flung them round me as if we knew more about each other than our names, but as is often the case with women these days, her interest was in Hawk junior, not senior. Jenny had seen Jaikie in All Good Men and True and proceeded to babble on about his performance. As with most of his admirers, she would have preferred him to be there instead of me and her making do with the substitute was beginning to irritate me. There is only so much pride one can take in a successful child.
Eventually she and Rollo were hauled away by one of the catering team to give an opinion on something to do with the grub. No sooner had Jenny left me, with a promise to be back in a trice, than Laura tapped me on the shoulder.
“Nathan, could I have a word,” she said.
Foolishly I expected it to be something to do with having asked her to marry me. Like yes. or no.
“Don’t make a show of it,” she went on. “Just turn your back to me for a moment.”
Such was the urgency in her voice that I did as she’d asked. When I turned back she was half smiling, half dying.
“You were so pleased that you could still get into that suit. I even heard you boasting to Martin Falconer that it fitted you better now than when you bought it.” She leaned towards me and whispered in my ear. “Tineola bisselliella also likes it. The clothes moth. There are three small holes in the back of the jacket.”
I took it off and held it up by the shoulder pads. She was right. There were three tufted snags where the tineola larvae had started to make a meal out of my vanity. However, they were about to be upstaged by a far more unpleasant parasite.
A couple had just arrived and were apologising to Rollo for their lateness, a breakdown, police, temporary lights on the road from Winslow. Rollo closed his eyes on their apology, not so much
to discount it as in hope that when he opened them again they wouldn’t be there. It was The Bag Man, Leonard Blake and his wife Alicia, the former pushing the latter in a plush wheelchair. She been struck down by multiple sclerosis ten years ago, I discovered later, and though she was still able to get about, Rollo’s lawn was a problem.
Jenny came gangling past me, loose limbs, loose tongue.
“What the hell are those two...?”
Doing here? she would have said, if pushed. The question was top of my list as well.
Jenny reached them, stooped to Alicia and exchanged air kisses, interspersed with questioning glances at Rollo that only an interested party would have noticed. Did you invite this pair? she was asking. Possibly, said her husband, but I didn’t think they’d come. For some reason I was a triangulation point for the Leveques. That isn’t self-importance on my part. They wanted to see how I was reacting. The answer was: with extreme interest. From a position of not wanting to come to this party, I found myself extremely glad that I had. Rollo Leveque and Leonard Blake? Friends? Business partners?
I handed my jacket to Laura and heard her warning words as I went to add my greetings to the new arrivals,
“Nathan, be careful...”
Blake spotted me and wasn’t nearly as intimidated by my presence as he should’ve been. It surprised him, yes, but didn’t unnerve him.
“Ah, Mr. Hawk,” he said.
He extended a hand which I would have preferred to chop off rather than shake. I looked down at it as if it carried some unspeakable disease.
“You two know each other?” Rollo asked, cautiously.
I nodded. “We have mutual friends.”
“Alicia works with me at the Oxfam shop,” Jenny said, and once given her head, she prattled on about their first meeting, their friendship, their need to give something back to the community and God knows what else.
“Let me get you both a Pimms,” said Rollo, hoping that more booze would ease the tension. “Nathan, another whisky?”
“No thanks.”
He went over to a waitress and asked her to bring the drinks. Believing now that nothing physical was about to happen, at least in the immediate future, Blake suddenly became smug and compassionate towards me.
“Shame about your friend,” he said.
Did I know what he was going to say next, I’ve since asked myself. Or am I overplaying the copper’s nose factor?
“What friend?”
“Tom Manners.”
“He’s not my friend.”
Blake smiled and strung out the insult. “Well, it’s still a shame.”
“What is?” Laura asked, having joined us.
“Oh, you haven’t heard?” I inched a little closer to him. “He was arrested this morning for the murder of that girl.”
Was this the time or place to sink my fist into that inviting gut? Probably not, but that’s never bothered me in the past and The Map was in the jacket Laura was holding over her arm, carefully folded inside out. I should explain. It was, and still is, an imaginary map of the world bequeathed to me by a old bank robber called Roy Arthur Pullman. He was built like a door and had a fearful temper and whenever he thought it might be triggered and he’d be in danger of wrecking a room, he would reach into his inside pocket, take it out, unfold it, even put on a pair of non-existent glasses to see it more clearly. He would raise his forefinger and bring it down on what he referred to as “a far more agreeable place” away from the havoc he might otherwise wreak. He would go there in his mind and be unreachable for fifteen, twenty minutes, held fast in a state of self hypnosis. The last time I arrested him he was dying. The fire had gone out. He’d pushed The Map across the desk to me saying that I needed it more than he did. To my own surprise, though not to Roy Pullman’s, I folded it, put it in my pocket and have used it ever since to ward off the chance of going berserk.
To the wide-eyed delight of Rollo and Jenny’s party guests I unfolded it now in theatrical style and spread it out on a nearby table. I closed my eyes, raised a forefinger and held it aloft, unsure of where to bring it down. I had a choice of four places: Galway, Tokyo, Nepal or, the long shot, Hawaii. My dithering was the result of a round robin email I’d sent the family four nights previously, following my reluctance to seek their thoughts about marrying Laura. I’d said, breezily enough,
“Job done, guys! I’ve asked Laura to marry me.”
I’d sat back, waiting for my computer to burst into flames with their joyful responses. Silence. Terrifying how the mind can invent a forked lightning scenario almost instantly. With those nine or ten words, I’d begun a narrative where my four grown up children no longer spoke to me, mortified by my disloyalty to their mother. Fine that I should have a relationship with Laura but to imply that she would ever take Maggie’s place was a presumption too far. There would be consequences. I would have to prepare four arguments, one for each of their very different personalities. Twenty years down the line we’d be reconciled, but in between I’d wish I’d never met Laura...
The train of thought hit the buffers when I told myself, in feeble defiance, that I didn’t need their bloody permission. Had they ever asked mine? About anything? The nerves abated for a couple of days and then the shit hit the fan, not in a bad way but in a loving way, as current gibberish has it. I received an email from my youngest daughter, Ellie, she with the brains and beauty of the family rolled into one. She’d gone to work in Nepal, in an orphanage. And, unlike me, had no regrets about it.
“Dad, sorry I didn’t get back sooner, but we’ve had the builders in. They had to travel two hundred kilometres by helicopter, then the last seventy by donkey. Great excitement for the family, though - my family here, not you guys! Yeah, re you asking Laura to marry you, you didn’t say what her reply was. Or do I have to ask? xx."
What she said bothered me, especially the part about ‘her family’. The kids in Nepal. Not us. Even so, I replied with the truth and knew it was a mistake to have done so.
“Hope the building work goes well. Remember, tea on the hour, every hour. Laura said she’ll let me know when she’s decided. Dad x.”
Ellie wasn’t sure how to handle that but her elder sister was and emailed me half an hour later, umbrage to the fore.
“Dad, what does Laura mean ‘when she’s decided’? Would you like me to have a word with her?”
“No!!!” I emailed back instantly. “No, thank you. Besides, weren’t you going to Hawaii to find Con?”
That raised an alarming prospect. “Going next week. I could fly on to Heathrow. What do you say? x.”
I misquoted Hamlet to myself. Thus do children make cowards of us all. As I was considering my backtracking response to Fee’s offer, I got an upgrade email from Jaikie.
“Dad, Fee says you and Laura might be splitting up. FFS. That’s short for for fuck’s sake, in case you’re wondering. So, what gives?”
Not a word about himself, grey hairs, his own brilliance, the director’s flattery - nothing. For the first time in about eight years he’d been stunned into thinking just about me. As I laid my fingers on the keyboard, ready to bring these flights of fancy down, so we were all gobsmacked by an email from Con.
“Dad, congratulations! Of course she’ll marry you! Just behave yourself for the next few months (nudge, nudge) and it’s in the bag. About bloody time, as Mum would’ve said. See you Christmas.”
What is it about some people’s ability to make you feel ten feet tall? With Con it was never explained away by him being my son. The guy had barged in and out of my life for the past thirty years, begging for money, getting himself addicted, making horrendous mistakes and yet he had the mysterious knack of being present in a room five minutes before he entered it. Jaikie had to go to drama school to learn how to mimic that. Is it a real quality or just the onlooker submitting to charm? I emailed Fee by return of pigeon.
“Con’s alive and well! No need for you to go traipsing round Hawaii, then. In which case forget the onward f
light to Heathrow, eh?”
She got back to me, of course, the last word always being Fee’s and as usual she’d read something into nothing.
“Good to know he’s still with us and we’ll see him Xmas. What he said, though, about behaving yourself. Are you having a ... thing with somebody else?”
Her neurons were on overtime. And The Map hadn’t had quite the palliative effect it was meant to. I folded it in elaborate style, replaced it in my jacket pocket and told the assembled crowd we were leaving.
***
Back at Beech Tree I performed a token funeral service for the suit and slung it in the bin. I put on my ... uniform, I suppose you’d call it: jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket. If there’s one thing you can say for tineola bisselliella they don’t mess with leather.
Laura had watched all this with an air of stoic defeat, an air of sadness tucked in there somewhere. Perhaps her decision to marry me or not rested with my clothes? Suit yes, jeans, leather jacket, no. It often comes down to such details in the end. To hell with it. I turned to the door...
“Nathan, it’s nearly eight o’clock. If you left it till the morning you’d be...”
She was right. It was damn near dark outside and I hadn’t noticed. How time flies when you’re enjoying yourself.
- 12 -
Thame police station, unlike big city nicks, is one you can walk into without feeling like a shark and behind the desk, in a diver’s cage, is some poor kid you mean to have for breakfast. Thame’s far more relaxed and the young copper who greeted me even took his feet off the counter and leaned forward to be friendly.
“Can I help, sir?”
“I’d like a word with DCI Finchum. Is he in?”
Jericho Road: A Nathan Hawk Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Mystery series Book 5) Page 8