Playing for the Ashes by Elizabeth George
“You’ve never run into her? You’ve made no attempt to locate her throughout the years?”
“We parted badly,” Mrs. Whitelaw said. “I had no interest in locating her. I’ve little doubt the feeling was mutual.”
“When her father died—”
“Inspector. Please. I know you’re doing your job…”
But and the accompanying protest went unsaid.
Lynley gave her a quick examination in the mirror. At this point, eighteen hours into her knowledge of Fleming’s death, Miriam Whitelaw looked as if she’d been spiritually drawn and quartered, a decade older than she had appeared even that morning when Lynley had fetched her. Her wan face seemed to beg for mercy.
It was, Lynley knew, the perfect opportunity to press for answers while her ability to resist and avoid his queries wore thinner each moment. Every one of his colleagues in CID would have recognised that fact. And most of those same colleagues would have sought the advantage, hammering out questions and demanding answers until they had the ones they sought. But to Lynley’s way of thinking, there was generally a point of diminishing returns in the questioning of those intimately connected to a murder victim. There was a point at which those intimately connected with the murder victim would say anything in order to bring a ceaseless interrogation to an end.
“Don’t be soft, laddie,” DI MacPherson would say. “Mairder is mairder. Go for the throat.”
It never quite mattered whose throat was being gone for. Eventually, the right jugular vein would be hit.
Not for the first time, Lynley wondered if he had a hard enough core to be a policeman. The take-no-prisoners approach to conducting an investigation was anathema to him. But any other approach seemed to place him far too dangerously close to empathising with the living instead of avenging the dead.
He negotiated his way through the traffic near Buckingham Palace, getting stalled behind a tourist coach that was disgorging onto the pavement a large group of blue-haired women in polyester trousers and sensible shoes. He wove through the taxis in Knightsbridge, did some back-street navigating to avoid a traffic snarl south of Kensington Gardens, and finally emerged into the late afternoon shopping and pedestrian frenzy that was Kensington High Street. From there, it was less than three minutes to Staffordshire Terrace, where all was tranquil and a solitary little boy wobbled on a skateboard across the street from Number 18.
Lynley got out to help Mrs. Whitelaw from the car. She took his offered hand. Her own was cool and dry. Her fingers closed over his tightly, then moved to his arm as he led her to the steps. She leaned against him. She smelled faintly of lavender, powder, and dust.
At the door, she fumbled her key against the lock, scraping metal across metal until she was able to get it in. When she had the door opened, she turned to him.
She looked so unwell that Lynley said, “May I phone your doctor?”
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “I must try to sleep. I couldn’t last night. Perhaps tonight….”
“Wouldn’t you like your doctor to prescribe something for you?”
She shook her head. “There’s no medication to prescribe for this.”
“Is there any message you’d like me to give your daughter? I’m going to Little Venice from here.”
Her gaze drifted past him, over his shoulder, as if she was considering the question. Her mouth pulled down at the corners. “Tell her I’ll always be her mother. Tell her Ken doesn’t…Ken didn’t change that.”
Lynley nodded. He waited to see if she would say more. When she didn’t, he went back down the steps. He’d opened the car door when he heard her say:
“Inspector Lynley?” He raised his head. She’d come to the edge of the top step. One of her hands was gripping the wrought-iron banister where a tendril of star jasmine wound about it. “I know you’re trying to do your job,” she said. “I thank you for that.”
He waited until she had gone inside and closed the door behind her. Then he set off again, heading north as he had on the previous night beneath the planes and sycamores in Campden Hill Road. The distance from Kensington to Little Venice was considerably shorter than the trip to Hugh Patten’s house in Hampstead had been. But that trip had been made after eleven at night when traffic was thin. Now the streets were clogged with vehicles. He used the time it took to inch through Bayswater to telephone Helen, but he ended up listening to her answering machine voice telling him she was out and inviting him to leave a message. He said, “Damn,” as he waited for the infernal beep. He hated answering machines. They were just another indication of the social anomie plaguing these final years of the century. Impersonal and efficient, they reminded him how easy it was to replace a human being with an electronic device. Where once there had been a Caroline Shepherd to answer Helen’s phone, cook her meals, and keep her life in order, now there was a tape cassette, take-away Chinese, and a weekly cleaning woman from County Clare.
“Hullo darling,” he said when the beep finally sounded. And then he thought, Hullo darling and what? Did you find the ring where I left it? Do you like the stone? Will you marry me? Today? Tonight? Damn. He loathed these answering machines.
“I’m going to be tied up till this evening, I’m afraid. Shall we have dinner? Sometime around eight?” He paused idiotically as if expecting a reply. “Have you had a good day?” Another witless pause. “Look, I’ll phone you when I get back to the Yard. Keep the evening free. I mean if you get this message keep the evening free. Because of course I realise you might not get this message at all. And if you don’t, I can’t expect you to hang about waiting for me to phone, can I? Helen, do you have something planned for the evening? I can’t recall. Perhaps we can—”
A beep sounded. A computerised voice recited, “Thank you for the message. The time is three-twenty-one.” The line disconnected.
Lynley cursed. He replaced the phone. He utterly despised those blasted machines.
Since the day had been a fine one, Little Venice still accommodated a good number of people who were taking the afternoon to explore some of London’s canals. They floated along in tour boats and listened to their guides’ commentaries and gossip to which they appreciatively murmured in response. They strolled along the pavement, admiring the bright spring flowers that grew in pots on the roofs and the decks of barges. They dawdled at the colourful railing of the Warwick Avenue bridge.
To the southwest of this bridge, Browning’s Pool formed a rough triangle of oleaginous water, one side of which was lined with more barges. These were the wide, full-size, flat-bottomed crafts that had once been towed by horses through the system of canals that crisscrossed much of the south of England. In the nineteenth century, they had served as a means of transporting goods. Now they were stationary, and they acted as housing for artists, writers, craftsmen, and poseurs of the same.
Christopher Faraday’s barge floated directly across from Browning’s Island, an oblong of willow-studded land that rose from the centre of the pool. As Lynley approached it along the walkway bordering the canal, a young man in running gear overtook him. He was accompanied by two panting dogs, one of which loped along unsteadily on only three legs. While Lynley watched, the dogs dashed ahead of the runner and scrambled up the two steps and onto the barge to which he himself was heading.
When Lynley got there, the young man was standing on the deck, towelling the sweat from his face and neck, and the dogs—a beagle and the three-legged mixed breed who looked as if he’d seen the worse end of too many street fights with worthier opponents—were noisily slurping water from two heavy ceramic bowls, which sat on a stack of newspapers. The word dawg was painted on the beagle’s bowl, the words dawg two on the mixed breed’s.
Lynley said, “Mr. Faraday?” and the young man lowered the blue towel from his face. Lynley produced his warrant card and introduced himself. “Christopher Faraday?” he said again.
Faraday tossed the towel onto the waist-high roof of the cabin and moved to stand between Lynley and
“What can I do for you?” Faraday said.
“I’m looking for Olivia Whitelaw.”
“Livie?”
“I understand she lives here.”
“What’s up?”
“Is she at home?”
Faraday reached for the towel and slung it round his neck. “Go to Livie,” he said to the dogs. And to Lynley as the animals obediently trotted to a glass gazebo-affair that topped the cabin and acted as its entry, “Just a minute, all right? Let me see if she’s up.”
Up? Lynley wondered. It was just after half past three. Was she still plying her trade at night that she had to sleep in the middle of the day?
Faraday ducked into the gazebo and descended some steps. He left the cabin door cracked open behind him. Lynley heard a sharp bark from one of the dogs, followed by the scratching of claws against linoleum or wood. He moved closer to the gazebo and listened. Hushed voices spoke.
Faraday’s was barely distinguishable. “…police…asking for…no, I can’t…you’ve got to…”
Olivia Whitelaw’s became clearer and far more urgent. “I can’t. Don’t you see? Chris. Chris!”
“…cool…be okay, Livie….”
A sound of heavy shuffling followed. Papers crinkled. A cupboard slammed. Then another. Then a third. Moments later footsteps came to the door.
“Mind your head,” Chris Faraday said. He’d donned the trousers of a tracksuit. They’d once been red but now were faded to the same rusty colour of his wiry hair. This was overly thin for a man his age, leaving a small, monk-like tonsure at the top of his head.
Lynley joined him in a long, dimly lit, pine-panelled room. It was partially fitted with carpet and partially floored in linoleum beneath a large workbench where the mixedbreed dog had gone to lie. On the carpet lay three enormous pillows. Near them sat a hotchpotch arrangement of five old and mismatched armchairs. One of these contained a woman, dressed neck to toe in black. Lynley would not have seen her at first had it not been for the colour of her hair, which acted as a beacon against the pine walls. It was an incandescent white-blonde, with an odd cast of yellow to it and roots the colour of dirty engine oil. It was hacked short on one side, grown out to beneath her ear on the other.
“Olivia Whitelaw?” Lynley said.
Faraday moved to the workbench and opened a panel of shutters approximately an inch. The resulting aperture cast light on the wood-panelled ceiling and allowed a diffused glow to fall upon the woman in the chair. She shrank from it and said, “Shit. Chris, go easy,” and she reached slowly to the floor next to her chair and picked up an empty tomato tin from which she removed a packet of Marlboros and a plastic lighter.
When she lit her cigarette, her rings caught the light. They were silver, worn on every finger. They matched the studs that lined her right ear like chromium eruptions and acted as counterpoint to the large safety pin that slid through her left.
“Olivia Whitelaw. That’s right. Who wants to know and why?” The cigarette smoke reflected the light. It created the sensation that an undulating veil of gauze hung between them. Faraday opened another panel of shutters. Olivia said, “That’ll do. Why’n’t you piss off somewhere?”
“I’m afraid he’ll need to stay,” Lynley said. “I’d like him to answer some questions as well.”
Faraday pressed the button on a fluorescent lamp above the workbench. It shed a brilliant, white, and decidedly area-specific glow upon that small section of the room. At the same time it also served to create a fulgent diversion for the eyes, urging them away from the old armchair where Olivia sat.
There was a stool in front of the workbench, and Faraday chose to perch on this. Looking between them, Lynley’s eyes would constantly be making the adjustment from brightness to shadow. It was a clever set-up. They’d managed it so quickly and effortlessly that Lynley wondered if it had been a what-to-do-when-the-rozzers-finally-arrive predetermined behaviour.
He chose the armchair closest to Olivia. “I’ve a message from your mother,” he said.
The tip of her cigarette flared like a coal. “Yeah? Tra lah. Should I celebrate or something?”
“She said to tell you that she’ll always be your mother.”
Olivia observed him from behind the smoke, eyelids lowered and one hand keeping the cigarette at the ready, two inches from her mouth.
“She said to tell you Kenneth Fleming didn’t change that.”
Her eyes stayed on him. Her expression didn’t alter at the mention of Fleming’s name. “Am I supposed to know what that means?” she finally asked.
“Actually, I’m misquoting her. At first she said Kenneth Fleming doesn’t change that.”
“Well, I’m glad to know the old cow can still moo.” Olivia sounded largely bored. Across the room Lynley heard Faraday’s clothing rustle as he moved. Olivia didn’t look in his direction.
“Present tense,” Lynley said. “Doesn’t. And then the switch to past. Didn’t. She’s been trading between the two since last night.”
“Doesn’t. Didn’t. I know my grammar. And I also know Kenneth Fleming’s dead, if that’s what you’re slithering towards.”
“You’ve spoken to your mother?”
“I read the newspaper.”
“Why?”
“Why? What sort of question is that? I read the newspaper because that’s what I do when Chris brings it home. What do you do with yours? Cut it up in squares to use on your bum when you shit?”
“Livie,” Faraday said from his workbench.
“I meant why didn’t you telephone your mother?”
“We haven’t spoken in years. Why should I have done?”
“I don’t know. To see if there was something you could do to make her grieving a bit easier?”
“Something along the lines of ‘sorry to hear your toyboy’s had his ticket cancelled prematurely’?”
“So you knew that your mother had a relationship of some kind with Kenneth Fleming. Despite the years during which you haven’t spoken.”
Olivia pushed her cigarette between her lips. Lynley saw from her expression that she recognised how easily he had led her into the admission. He also saw her evaluating what else she had inadvertently revealed.
“I said I read newspapers,” she replied. Against the chair, it seemed as if her left leg was vibrating, perhaps with cold—which it was not inside the barge—perhaps with nerves. “Their story’s been rather hard to avoid for the past few years.”
“What do you know of it?”
“Just what’s been in the papers. He worked for her in Stepney. They live together. She’s helped his career. She’s supposed to be like his fairy godmother or something.”
“The expression toyboy implies more than that.”
“Toyboy?”
“The expression you used a moment ago. ‘Her toyboy’s had his ticket cancelled prematurely.’ That suggests something beyond merely being a fairy godmother to a younger man, wouldn’t you agree?”
Olivia flicked tobacco ash into the tomato tin. She brought the cigarette back to her mouth and spoke behind her hand. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve a nasty mind.”
“Have you assumed from the first that they were lovers?” Lynley asked. “Or was there something more recent that gave you the impression?”
“I haven’t assumed anything. I haven’t been interested enough to assume. I’m just reaching the logical conclusion one generally reaches about what happens when a todger and a grumble—usually but not always unrelated to each other by blood or marriage—occupy the same space for a period of time. It’s the birds and the bees. Hard cock and wet twat.
“It’s rather unsettling, though, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“The idea of your mother with a man so much younger. Younger than yourself or perhaps your own age.” Lynley leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He aimed for a posture declaring this a move towards earnest conversation and in doing so managed to get a better look at her left leg. It was indeed vibrating, as was her right. But she didn’t seem to be aware of the movement. “Let’s be frank,” he said with as much ingenuousness as he could manage. “Your mother isn’t a particularly youthful sixty-six-year-old. Did you never ask yourself whether she was blindly and foolishly putting herself into the hands of a man who was after something rather more than the dubious pleasure of taking her to bed? He was a nationally known sportsman. Don’t you agree that he could probably have had his pick of willing women less than half your mother’s age? That being the case, what do you imagine he had in mind when he took up with your mother?”
Her eyes narrowed. She weighed his questions. “He had a mother complex he was trying to work out. Or a grandmother complex. He liked them old and wrinkled. He liked them when they sagged. Or he only felt a bonk was truly worthwhile if the curlies were grey. Have it anyway you want. I can’t explain the situation.”
“But weren’t you bothered by it? If, in fact, that was the nature of their relationship. Your mother denies it, by the way.”
“She can say and do whatever she wants, far as I’m concerned. Her life is her life.” Olivia gave a low whistle in the direction of a doorway that appeared to lead into a galley. “Beans,” she called. “Get out here with you. What’s he up to, Chris? Did you fold the laundry when you brought it home? If you didn’t, he’ll be sleeping in the middle of it.”
Faraday slipped off his stool. He touched her shoulder and disappeared round the doorway, calling, “Beans! Come on. Hey! Damn it.” Then he laughed. “He’s got my socks, Livie. This bloody animal is chewing on my socks. Let go, you mongrel. Here. Give me those.” The sound of tussling followed, accompanied by a dog’s playful growling. Under the workbench, the other dog raised his head.