by John Harvey
“This is all nonsense and you know it.” Warren’s hand was still steady, but the conviction was fading from his voice.
“You know what first made me think of you?” Elder said. “Reading the pathologist’s report. Lorraine Game’s neck, snapped with a single wrench of the head. Someone with strong arms, strong hands.”
Letting the glass fall, Warren drove his right fist toward Elder’s face, and, ready for it, Elder threw out an arm and forced the blow wide. He was unprepared for the next, a fast looping left that caught him on the edge of the jaw and propelled him out of his seat, spinning toward the floor.
Before he could pull himself up, Warren had wrenched open the door into the garden and disappeared from sight.
Elder righted his chair and sat back down, ruefully rubbing his jaw. There was still a finger of whisky left in his glass. Anil Khan, he was sure, would have taken the precaution of stationing officers front and back. “Let him have the chance,” Prior had said. “Show what he can do.”
Through the open door, Elder could hear raised voices, the sound of a scuffle; then something louder, duller, like something heavy being thrown against the side of a car.
More shouts.
Silence.
Khan’s grinning face at the door.
Chapter 43
THE WEEK LEADING INTO THE WHITSUN BANK HOLIDAY was suddenly sunny and warm, topping twenty-three degrees. On the Wednesday evening, Elder had somehow contrived to be in a crowded pub, staring with disbelief at the big screen while Liverpool clawed their way back from being three goals down to win the European Cup. And then, the next night, Joanne had surprised him with tickets to see Elvis Costello at the Royal Concert Hall, a present, she claimed, from one of her customers; the first time Elder had been to see any kind of rock music live since he’d grudgingly agreed to accompany Joanne to see Rod Stewart in 1989, the year they had moved to London.
Costello he could remember from his time in Lincolnshire, when he was just a young officer in CID: “Oliver’s Army,” “Pump It Up,” “Watching the Detectives.” The last a bit of a natural favourite. Despite the almost total inappropriateness of its lyrics, he and Joanne had slow-danced to “Alison” at their wedding.
“Come on, Frank,” Joanne had said when he demurred. “Enjoy yourself for once. Doesn’t pay to get old before your time.”
He and Costello, Elder had to remind himself, were more or less of an age. Difficult to believe after watching Costello thrashing away at several guitars for more than two hours without a break, singing himself hoarse in front of a three-piece band.
Elder wasn’t sure if he found all that energy intimidating or inspiring. And although much of the music slammed abrasively past him, there were songs he recognized and happily tapped his feet to: a heartfelt “Shipbuilding,” originally about young men caught up in the Falklands War but just as sadly appropriate now; and, of course, there was “Alison,” Joanne sliding her hand over his and giving it a squeeze.
“You’ll still be here Saturday, Frank?” she asked when he’d walked her home.
“Probably.”
“Come round for dinner, then. I’ll ask Katherine.”
He kissed her cheek and it was warm; the keys were in her hand.
“You won’t come in?”
“I don’t think so.”
Joanne smiled. “Saturday, then.”
“Yes, sure.”
ANNA INGRAM WAS SITTING IN HER GARDEN, SHELTERED from the sun by a large umbrella. The swelling on her face had gone down significantly, though there was still a clear residue of bruising; her jaw was out of plaster and she could talk, albeit slowly. She offered Elder biscuits and homemade lemonade, both of which he gratefully accepted.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’ll live,” Anna said, and then shivered, realizing what lay behind the words.
“You’ll be able to go back to work?”
“Soon. Too soon, probably.” She gestured about her with her hands. “A life of leisure—I could get used to it, given time.”
The garden was coming into flower; soon everything would be at its best. Not for the first time in the past days, Elder caught himself thinking of his part of Cornwall, small pink and white flowers in profusion between stone walls, the fuchsia virulently in bloom.
“Once,” Anna began, “not long after we started seeing one another, as a couple, Vincent asked me if I would wear a dress that had belonged to his mother. Of course, I refused, it seemed totally bizarre, and he passed it off as some kind of joke. He never mentioned anything similar again.”
She paused: speaking was less than comfortable.
“Then there was one occasion when we were... we were making love. It didn’t happen often, not even then. And I can’t say I minded when it stopped more or less completely. But on this occasion, Vincent, he... this isn’t easy for me... he seemed more excited than usual. I mean, normally it was all very orthodox, he had to be absolutely in control, sex by the numbers, but this particular evening, for whatever reason, it was as if he lost himself in what was happening, totally, and just as he was about to climax he called out his mother’s name: ‘Margaret! Margaret!’ And then, afterward, he curled up in my arms with his head against my breast and cried. And I cuddled him, as if he were a little child.”
Anna was crying herself at the memory.
At what she now thought it meant.
“I should have told you sooner,” she said. “Shouldn’t I?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Elder said. “We got there in the end.”
“He was good company,” she said. “Vincent, when he wanted to be. He was intelligent, opinionated—the most opinionated person I ever met—but he never patronized me. I liked that. I liked it when we argued, about art or literature or the theatre. I liked being able to hold my own. And it was never boring.” She righted herself in her chair. “Now I feel I’ve just woken from a dream. You know, that strange half-shocked state you’re in when the dream’s just broken.”
“I think so,” Elder said.
“I suppose you’ll soon be heading back down to Cornwall?” Anna said.
“Yes. Just a few more things to tie up first.”
“You like it down there?”
“It suits.”
She insisted on walking him, however slowly, to the gate. “That gallery, Tate St. Ives, have you ever been?”
“Once, with my daughter.”
“I keep telling myself I should go down, take a look. The building itself is supposed to be really special.”
Elder wondered if there was something he was supposed to say.
“But it is a long way,” Anna said with a smile.
“Yes, it is.”
They shook hands.
BERNARD YOUNG HAD THANKED HIM PUBLICLY IN FRONT of the squad and then privately in his office over a glass of Lagavulin.
“There’s always a job for you here,” the superintendent said. “You know that.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“And not just here. You know Bob Framlingham?”
Elder did, indeed. Robert “Farmer” Framlingham, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Murder Review Unit. They’d worked together in the past.
“He’s got the go-ahead to set up a national team, shadowing the new National Crime Squad, looking at cold cases, ones that go across normal boundaries, advising. Kind of thing you’ve done once or twice before. He’d like you to be in there with him, at the start. Help set it up. Told me to let you know.”
“I’m flattered,” Elder said. “Be lying if I said otherwise.”
“So I can tell him you’re interested?”
“I don’t think so.”
“For God’s sake, Frank...”
“This unit, where would it be based, for one thing?”
“London, I imagine, initially. After that—well, national means national. Gould be anywhere.”
“But probably not Cornwall.”
“Probably not.
”
Elder finished his scotch. “I’ll keep in touch, Bernard. Next time I come up to see Katherine, we’ll meet and have ajar.”
“Right, let’s do that.”
Within a year or so, Bernard Young would retire to the Yorkshire Dales, and Katherine would be away studying at Loughborough or Sheffield. It was life: it was what happened.
KATHERINE WAS ALREADY AT THE HOUSE WHEN ELDER arrived; she and her mother drinking gin and tonics in the kitchen, while Joanne put the finishing touches to a generous salad. Pots were simmering on the stove.
“I hope you’re hungry, Frank.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The salad dressing made, but not applied, Joanne excused herself to go upstairs and change. Elder accepted a glass of white wine and quizzed Katherine gently about any plans she had for when she’d finished her degree.
“I’m going to go to Africa,” she said. “Work with one of these projects teaching gymnastics to little kids in Zimbabwe or somewhere.”
“You’re not serious?”
“No. But I probably should be.”
Joanne reappeared in a sheer, pale blue dress with a slashed front and slit to midthigh at one side. Katherine whistled approval and Elder looked vaguely embarrassed.
For starters there was an onion tart Joanne had picked up at a fancy deli close to where she worked; lamb stew with thyme and anchovies was served with couscous, and there was salad to follow. For dessert there were little individual ramekins of crème caramel, courtesy, also, of the delicatessen. There was cheese that nobody really wanted or had room for.
White wine was followed by red, and then Joanne produced a small bottle of dessert wine at the end. The conversation, a little stilted at first, soon ran to tales of small embarrassments and misdemeanours, in the way that family conversations often do.
A family: these past years it had been all too easy to forget that’s what they still were.
Although she’d tried to insist it was perfectly safe for her to walk back to her student room, Elder had insisted Katherine take a cab. At the door, he kissed her and held her close.
“Wherever you finally decide to go, to do the degree, you’ll let me know?”
She grinned. “I doubt it.”
He slipped a fiver into her hand for the fare.
When he got back inside, Joanne had cleared most of the things from the table and he carried the last few glasses into the kitchen.
“You want me to help with those?” he asked.
“I’ve got a dishwasher, Frank. No need.”
He grinned. “It used to be me.”
Joanne smiled, remembering.
“That flat in Shepherd’s Bush,” Elder said. “The kitchen was so small we couldn’t both be in it at the same time.”
“Without a squeeze,” Joanne said. “Not that that was such a bad thing.”
Kissing him, she slipped one hand behind his head, her fingers touching his neck, her breasts against his chest. Eyes closed, Elder kissed her back, and for a moment there was nothing else: the feel of her body against his, her breath, her kiss. No memories, good or bad.
“Jo,” he said, when finally she stepped back.
“I know, I know.”
“The dinner, it was great.”
Looking down, she shook her head.
“I mean it, the whole thing. Kate. You. It was lovely. A lovely evening.”
“Frank, if you’re going, just go.”
His coat was in a walk-in closet off the hall.
Joanne had poured herself a glass of brandy and lit a cigarette. She was standing by the window, outlined against the dark.
“When are you back down to Cornwall?”
Elder shrugged his shoulders. “Tomorrow? The day after?”
“Drive safely.”
“I will.”
He was at the living room door when she stubbed out her cigarette. “Don’t go, Frank. Stay.”
Elder took three more steps, stopped and turned around.
Acknowledgments
Writers, as Alan Bennett suggests, are not nice people. All the more reason to be grateful to those who stick their heads above the wire and offer encouragement, advice, and the occasional admonition: my thanks, therefore, to my exemplary editor, Susan Sandon, and to my agent, Sarah Lutyens; to Mary Chamberlain for her painstaking copyediting, and to Justine Taylor and others at Random House too numerous to mention; to both Sarah Boiling and Graham Nicholls (yet again) and, especially, to Bernard Ratigan, without whom this book would scarcely have been possible. The faults, as they say, are all mine.
About the Author
JOHN HARVEY is the author of ten previous Charlie Resnick novels and the Frank Elder series, and a recipient of the Silver Dagger Award, the Barry Award, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement, among other honors. He lives in London.