Funeral Music

by Morag Joss

  ‘Take a few deep breaths,’ he said quietly.

  She did as she was told, and after a minute the heat in the throbbing finger subsided into an icy anaesthesia. She said brightly, ‘I’m fine. It’s fine now, thanks.’ Paul released his hold on her wrist and stood, watching.

  ‘It was sharp, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I warned you.’

  She turned the finger slowly under the water. She would lose a flap of skin, that was all. She apologised again, pulling her hand away to dry it. Immediately all the pain flooded back into the cut. Blood welled out and plopped into the sink.

  ‘Keep it there,’ Paul ordered, drawing her hand back under the rod of water whining from the tap. ‘You’ll have to keep it there a while, until it runs clear.’

  ‘I’ll get a plaster,’ said Sue, who had come over from the table and was bending into a drawer.

  ‘It needs a proper bandage,’ Paul said. Sue came round and stood on the other side of Sara, staring at the finger dangling under the fall of water.

  ‘No, a plaster,’ she said. ‘A plaster would be better.’

  Sara was aware of a hissing noise which was coming from between Paul’s lips.

  ‘And I say that it needs a proper bandage,’ he said slowly.

  Olivia had a green plastic first-aid box open on the worktop. ‘Here’s a bit of gauze. If you fold it it can go under one of these big plasters,’ she said, hitting on the compromise. Sue and Paul exchanged a look over Sara’s head that made her want to duck.

  ‘I can do it,’ Sara said, hoping to preempt any squabble over the privilege, but succumbing easily to Paul’s insistence that he could do it better than she would herself.

  At supper it was a relief when the conversation turned from interesting injuries and recommended treatments to the now mundane topic of the murder. Sara endured the tedious trading of hypotheses and counterhypotheses, which was always accompanied by the reiterating of everyone’s alibis. It was strange how people felt the need to do that. Almost everyone she had spoken to had, sooner rather than later, and unprompted, delivered the statement that exonerated them personally from all suspicion. ‘Well, of course I...’ was usually how it started. Sue, well, of course, had left the Assembly Rooms that night at a quarter to eight and arrived nearly fifteen minutes late for her late shift at the health club. She had locked up just after eleven and then gone over to Paul’s place, a bedsit in the staff quarters in the grounds of Fortune Park, where she was staying, as she usually did, for the weekend.

  ‘I’ve got my place in Larkhall now, but I’m not usually there at weekends,’ she said. ‘It’s Cecily’s house and I’m more the lodger, only she’s having this thing with this married man.’ She sighed. ‘So it’s agreed, I make myself scarce at the weekend. Stupid, that, really, I think. Never works out, does it? I don’t think so, anyway.’

  She looked at Paul, who appeared not to be listening. ‘Anyway, he’s there at the weekend, usually. Sometimes just for an afternoon, sometimes longer. Suits me to keep away, anyway.’

  She smiled winningly at Paul. ‘Suits us, doesn’t it?’ Paul gave a faint smile. ‘Even with our shifts. There’s always a bit of time together. We were both working that night, I remember. Paul got in just before one, didn’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘We finished early in the Assembly Rooms so I went over to help with the desserts at the Pump Room. I left to come home just after eleven.’

  ‘But it’s only about half an hour out to Fortune Park, isn’t it?’ Sara asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, by car it is. But I take my bike in the summer. It’s an hour and three-quarters, then.’

  So that’s how he got that butt.

  Sue was talking again. ‘Bad enough in the summer sometimes, though, isn’t it? You got soaked that night; your hair was wet. It poured, didn’t it?’

  Olivia gave Paul a surreptitious coded glance at which he rose obediently and refilled glasses, while she left the table and returned with an overcrowded cheeseboard. She had obviously briefed him beforehand to look after people’s glasses, which seemed a little intense for a supper party for four people. Or perhaps he was just accustomed to playing host for her. He had certainly known where everything was kept in the kitchen cupboards, and had turned out the sauce rémoulade and some fairly ritzy salads to go with the salmon in the same mesmerising way that James had worked in Sara’s own kitchen. As they picked at the cheese Olivia still seemed anxious and Sue lapsed into silence. It was as if Paul were the holder of initiative for the whole household. He was the source of energy, Sara supposed, a kind of battery, without which the other two would simply run down and stop. Across the table Sara was able to look properly at him. His hair fell in thick brown skeins over his head and was so long Sara guessed that he had to tie it back for work. He had a long nose of interesting Gallic near-ugliness, but his face was dominated by his extraordinary green, almost unkind eyes. He looked back at her. His eyes were feral; Sara was live meat, and he was considering whether to bite her in half now or play with her for a bit first and bite her in half later. She was convinced that he knew precisely the effect he was having on her, including the moments following the cutting of her finger when in the confusion of pain, embarrassment, fright and mess, there had been a fragment of joy because he was touching her with such care. He was quite unreasonably sexy. We are simply not designed to withstand such men, Sara thought, looking over at Sue.

  How did she cope? She certainly worked hard to look the way she did. Her skin, suspiciously golden against her white T-shirt, looked marinaded and lightly oiled, ready for grilling. She wore delicate gold jewellery: a tiny chain with a minute something on it – possibly an ‘S’ – and three or four meagre rings. Like her blondeness, her jewellery was pretty and feminine in a High Street way, but her shiny health would have suited bold, ethnic things, bright enamelled bangles or a heavy beaded collar. Her thin, strong body was a model of aerobics-moulded loveliness, the contours of her pared-down haunches looking convincingly Californian for a girl from Corsham. But all her strength was physical, concentrated in her confident muscles; she conveyed no other power. It was as though her will were an injured cat hiding in a deserted building. Her black eyes were windows with broken panes. What at first had seemed in her to be mental vacancy was really dereliction.

  Olivia’s overorganised menu moved on smoothly to the finale of strawberry pavlova. She had worked hard for them. Sara wondered why she had gone to the trouble of inviting her at all, since she was obviously so tired and things at work were clearly more than enough for her. Was it really a concern for Sara’s well-being? Olivia had not really enquired about her beyond what politeness dictated. And she was surely too sophisticated to harbour any cosy ambitions to ‘get the young people together’, not that Sara regretted that she had. Over coffee in the beautiful drawing room, she concluded that perhaps Olivia was simply responding to an instinct to gather people round her after the outrage that had occurred in their midst.

  Remembering how tired Olivia had seemed, Sara rose to leave before eleven. She noticed that Sue and Olivia, coming downstairs to see her off, brought the used coffee cups with them, keen to have done with the clearing up and have the evening over. They said good-bye at the front door and turned back towards the kitchen. But Paul walked with her down the path, into the cool, private peace of the summer night. Sara was deliciously aware of him close behind her, near enough for his arms to reach round her waist, for him to bend his head to brush his lips across the back of her neck.

  ‘Well, good night. Thank you for looking after my finger,’ she said, turning.

  Paul took her hand as if to check the bandage, then turned it over gently and kissed it.

  ‘No fee,’ he said, not letting go.

  Sara looked at him, knowing that the powerlessness of her hand in his was signalling to him her willingness to succumb. He gave her fingers the merest, gentlest squeeze and kissed her hand again lightly, this time for much longer.

  ‘In fact, I think
you might benefit from another consultation.’

  Sara withdrew her hand.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’d have much too long a waiting list,’ she said, rather loudly. ‘Good night, Paul.’

  BY THE time she reached home, Sara was feeling not just slight triumph at having withstood Paul, but also a warm self-congratulation that the shock of Matthew Sawyer’s death was ebbing peaceably out of her life. So it was a new shock to discover that the one message on her answering machine was from Tom in Brussels, saying, in a voice at first barely recognisable as his, that he was catching the first flight back in the morning. James had been arrested.

  CHAPTER 10

  SARA PARKED ATROCIOUSLY in the forecourt and barged into the police station in Manvers Street, ready to be as loud, insistent and abusive as was necessary to get hold of Andrew Poole and put him right about the outrage, the ludicrousness of James’s arrest. The station constable rolled amiably over to the glass partition and gave Sara a smile of such naked pleasantness that she faltered instantly. They must train them to look like jolly uncles, she thought wildly; underneath he’s a corrupt little bastard.

  ‘Good evening, madam. That your car just now? I believe you’ve left your headlights on. Now, what can I do for you?’ he asked, still smiling. It was no use. Every molecule that went to make up the well-brought-up and socially effective Sara Selkirk understood that if someone is nice to you, you have to be nice back.

  ‘My friend, I have a friend who’s here, he’s being kept here, there’s some sort of mistake. James Ballantyne. I must see him. No, wait, is Chief Inspector Poole here? Can I see him? Andrew Poole? Please, it’s very important. There’s been a mistake.’ Inwardly, another Sara Selkirk, a mentally dislodged fishwife, was screaming, You bastards, you’ve got my poor sweet friend here; let him go, give me back my friend who has done nothing wrong. Oh, how dare you, you idiots, you bastards...

  The station constable shimmied off cheerfully, leaving Sara to wait in the faggy wood-panelled lobby. Time passed, punctuated by the occasional exchange of voices in the office behind the partition and the sounds of doors and feet. Then the station constable was back, beaming through the glass.

  ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  She heard the sound of a door being unlocked from the far side of the lobby and sprang up. So it had been easy after all. Obviously, just a misunderstanding. James was about to step through the door, sheepish, grateful and glad to be going home. Her relieved smile fell when Andrew appeared. Under the strip lighting of the lobby his face had a pitted, buttery pallor and Sara reflected with dismay that she probably looked the same to him.

  ‘Mr Ballantyne has been told that you are here. He has been informed, however, that you won’t be able to see him this evening. I’m sorry, Sara, there’s no more I can do.’

  ‘Andrew? What are you saying? You’ve got to let him go! Why is he here anyway? You’ve made a mistake! Why don’t you just let him go?’

  ‘Sara, Mr Ballantyne has been questioned about a serious matter. Yes, to do with the Matthew Sawyer case. No, I can’t tell you what. He is being held overnight and will be questioned further in the morning. His, well, partner – is that what he is? – will be here in the morning and legal representation is being arranged. Mr Ballantyne can’t be allowed to see anyone tonight.’

  Sara was stunned. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. What’s all this sudden “Mr Ballantyne” claptrap, Andrew? This is James we’re talking about here, Andrew, James. My friend. You’ve met him. You know he hasn’t done anything. Come on, he’s a pianist, a musician, not a murderer. Look, I want to see him. I’m here to take him home.’

  Andrew sighed with exasperation. ‘Sara, please try to get this straight. I’m doing you a favour even telling you this much. In ordinary circumstances the officer here would just have been sent to tell you to go home and come back in the morning. But I’m telling you myself. I’m sorry, but you can’t see James tonight.’

  ‘But why not? I want to see him! You’re not listening —’

  Andrew butted in angrily. ‘Christ, Sara, will you just listen! It makes no difference that he’s your friend, or a musician. If he’s guilty, I don’t care if he’s Herbert von bloody Karajan. I’m going for a conviction in this case, and I don’t give a damn if your precious friend has to put up with a night in the cells in the process. You may like to know that there is reason to suspect that he has already lied to the police.’

  ‘My God,’ Sara said, her voice low with venom, ‘I don’t believe this. Can’t you see how wrong you are? You’re just wrong! You’re being a fool. An absolute fool. And I’d been thinking you really were...something. I was thinking, poor Andrew, wasted like that, all that creativity, all that music, wasted in a job like that. And you understand nothing. I’ve been so stupid. You’re just—’

  ‘Yeah, I’m just a big, nasty old policeman, is that it?’ Andrew said bitterly. ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Go home, Sara. Go home. I have work to do. Good night.’

  Sara drove miserably to Camden Crescent, her head exploding with the discovery of Andrew’s brainless, mistaken unreasonableness and his I Am a Hofficer of the Law attitude. She parked outside the flat. The whole of Number 11 was in darkness. For no very sound reason this infuriated her further. She wondered how long James had been in police custody. He must have been allowed to make the telephone call to Tom sometime this evening, presumably quite late, if Tom had not been contacted in time to catch the last flight. He was an hour ahead in Brussels anyway, of course, which did not help. It was now half past twelve. The whole night lay ahead and she could do nothing for James until the morning. She drove home.

  TOM KISSED Sara drily on both cheeks and led her to a bench in the lobby of the police station. Outside it was a golden morning but the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling had not been switched off and still emitted a sick blue film of light that was so perturbing it was almost a noise.

  ‘I got here at seven,’ he said to Sara. ‘James didn’t even ring me till yesterday evening. They’d questioned him all yesterday afternoon with the duty solicitor there. I’ve got hold of someone from Thrings and Long who’ll be here at nine. Their main criminal cases chap. They can’t question him any more before then. But they won’t let me see him, even briefly.’

  ‘But why have they got him here in the first place?’ Sara demanded. ‘I just don’t see why he’s here at all. What’s he supposed to have done?’

  Tom gave a slow sigh. ‘It’s his own fault. I still don’t really know why, but he gave a false alibi for Friday the thirteenth. He told the police I rang him at about half past eleven and that we chatted for nearly half an hour.’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t. And if he’d stopped to think about it even for a second he’d have realised how stupid it was to say I had. The police rang me to verify it. And I’ve made a statement.’ He gestured helplessly. ‘I’m a lawyer, for God’s sake. I can’t possibly, possibly give false information to the police, in any circumstances. Even these,’ he said, before adding hopelessly, ‘I don’t think James quite understands that, even now.’

  ‘What a crazy thing for him to do. I mean, even if you had lied for him, they could easily check to see if the call had been made, couldn’t they? I don’t get it at all.’

  ‘Of course they could. No, I don’t get it either. And nor do the police, obviously. When they pressed him about it, he came up with some other story about looking in on a friend after he left the Pump Room. Wouldn’t elaborate. He can be so stubborn. And then later on he backtracked again and now says he went straight home and was there alone from eleven thirty onwards. Perhaps we’ll find out more when the lawyer gets here. But I don’t understand any of it – it’s a mess.’

  ‘What can I do? Is there anything?’

  Tom looked at her despondently. ‘You are so sweet. But no, apart from magicking an alibi out of the air, no, not really. There’s nothing. You were sweet to come, but look, you go now. I’ll ring you lat
er.’

  Sara left the police station, crossed the road and wandered hopelessly along Henry Street with nowhere to go. She found herself outside Marks and Spencer, went in and picked up a basket, not sure what she was doing there but dimly aware that if she was going to do some unnecessary shopping then the food department was a better place than many in which to do it. In fact she was quite hungry, not having bothered with breakfast, and a big, reliable egga and bacon sandwich might help her to think.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE POSSIBILITY DID not occur to her until a little later, and of course it couldn’t have been the sandwich that did it. But driving out of town up over the top of Lansdown to avoid the Monday traffic, she had seen it and remembered. Graham Xavier’s memorial service at St Michael’s. And as she waited for the lights to change, she also remembered how, at the end of that evening at the Pump Room, she had left James drinking mournfully on his own. In truth, she had been unwilling to see how upset he was. Perhaps now, she thought, pulling over to park, she could be of some use to him.

  She looked up towards the church. It stood on the very top of Lansdown Hill, at the fork where Lansdown Road led off on the left towards an undeclared little Vatican of private schools, tennis clubs and depressing houses in prosperous taste, and where Richmond Road on the right rose towards Charlcombe, almost as well-to-do but, by virtue of its muddy lanes and airy views, rather less stupefyingly nice. The church façade was stained a deep Victorian black from the cars and buses which coughed up the hill before dropping a gear, almost at the foot of the church steps, and burning off to the left or right, but above the door the stone paled and the high pointing spire was light against the clean sky.