Playing for the Ashes by Elizabeth George
“That’s finished things for now,” Sergeant Coffman said. “If you’d like to come this way, we can take you out quickly and get you home.”
“Right,” Jeannie said. She got to her feet. She tucked the cigarettes and matches into her handbag. She followed the sergeant back into the corridor.
The questions hammered at them and the cameras’ lights popped the moment they stepped into the evening air.
“It’s Fleming, then?”
“Suicide?”
“Accident?”
“Can you tell us what happened? Anything, Mrs. Fleming.”
It’s Cooper, Jeannie thought. Jean Stella Cooper.
Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley climbed the front steps of the Onslow Square building that housed the flat of Lady Helen Clyde. He hummed the same ten random notes of music that had been plaguing his brain like hungry mosquitoes ever since he’d left his office. He’d tried to drive them off with several quick recitations of the opening soliloquy from Richard III, but every time he directed his thoughts to dive down to his soul to herald the entrance of George, that wiliest Duke of Clarence, the blasted notes returned.
It wasn’t until he had actually let himself into Helen’s building and was bounding up the stairs to her flat that the source of his musical torment dawned upon him. And then he had to smile at the unconscious mind’s ability to communicate through a medium he hadn’t considered part of his world in years. He liked to think of himself as a classical music man, preferably a Russian classical music man. Rod Stewart singing “Tonight’s the Night” was hardly the choice he himself would have made to underscore the evening’s significance. Although, it was appropriate enough. As was Richard’s soliloquy, come to think of it, since like Richard, plots he had laid and although his inductions were not at all dangerous, they were intended to lead in one direction. The concert, a late dinner, a postprandial stroll to that decidedly quiet and underlit restaurant just off the King’s Road where, in the bar, one could depend upon soft music supplied by a harpist whose instrument rendered her incapable of wandering among the tables and interrupting conversations crucial to one’s future…. Yes, Rod Stewart was perhaps more appropriate than Richard III, for all his scheming. Because tonight was indeed the night.
“Helen?” he called as he shut the door. “Are you ready, darling?”
Silence was the response. He frowned at this. He’d spoken to her at nine this morning. He’d told her he’d be by at a quarter past seven. While that gave them forty-five minutes to make a ten-minute drive, he knew Helen well enough to realise that he had to allow a lengthy margin for error and indecision when it came to her preparations for an evening out. Still, she usually made a reply, calling out, “In here, Tommy,” from the bedroom where he would invariably find her attempting to resolve herself over six or eight different pairs of earrings.
He went in search of her and found her in the drawing room, stretched out on the sofa and surrounded by a mound of green and gold shopping bags whose logo he only too well recognised. Suffering the agonies of a woman who consistently disregards common sense in the selection of her footwear, she was an eloquent testament to the rigours involved in the simultaneous pursuit of bargain and fashion. She had one arm crooked over her head. When he said her name a second time, she groaned.
“It was like a war zone,” she murmured from beneath her arm. “I’ve never actually seen such a crowd in Harrods. And rapacious. Tommy, the word doesn’t even do justice to the women I had to fight through simply to get to the lingerie. Lingerie, for heaven’s sake. One would think they were battling over limited half pints from the fountain of youth.”
“Didn’t you tell me you were working with Simon today?” Lynley went to the sofa, uncrooked her arm, kissed her, and replaced the arm in position. “Wasn’t he supposed to be up to his ears preparing to testify for…What was it, Helen?”
“Oh, I did and he was. It’s something to do with distinguishing sensitisers in water-gel explosives. Amines, amino acids, silica gel, cellulose plates. I was positively dizzy with all the lingo by half past two. And the beastly man was in such a rush that he even insisted we go without lunch. Lunch, Tommy.”
“Dire straits indeed,” Lynley said. He lifted her legs, sat down, and rested her feet in his lap.
“I was willing to cooperate till half past three, working at the word processor till I was nearly blind, but at that point—faint with hunger, mind you—I bid him farewell.”
“And went to Harrods. Faint with hunger though you were.”
She lifted her arm, gave him a scowl, lowered the arm again. “I had you in mind all along.”
“Had you? How?”
She gestured weakly towards the shopping bags that surrounded them. “There. That.”
“There what?”
“The shopping.”
Blankly, he looked at the bags, saying, “You’ve been shopping for me?” and wondering how to interpret such unique behaviour. It wasn’t that Helen never surprised him with something amusing that she managed to ferret out in Portobello Road or the Berwick Street Market, but such largesse…. He examined her surreptitiously and wondered if, anticipating his designs, plans and inductions she had laid herself.
She sighed and swung her legs to the floor. She began rustling round in the bags. She discarded one that seemed filled with tissue and silk, then another containing cosmetics. She burrowed into a third and then a fourth and finally said, “Ah. Here it is.” She handed him the bag and continued her search, saying, “I’ve one as well.”
“One what?”
“Look and see.”
He pulled out a mound of tissue, wondering how much Harrods was contributing to the inevitable defoliation of the planet. He began to unseal and then to unwrap. He sat staring down at the navy tracksuit and pondered the message behind it.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Helen said.
“Perfectly,” he said. “Thank you, darling. It’s exactly what I…”
“You do need it, don’t you?” She rose from her prowl through the shopping bags and emerged triumphant with a tracksuit of her own, navy like his, although relieved with white piping. “I’ve been seeing them everywhere.”
“Tracksuits?”
“Joggers. Getting themselves fit. In Hyde Park. In Kensington Gardens. Along the Embankment. It’s time we joined them. Won’t that be fun?”
“Jogging?”
“Of course. Jogging. It’s just the very thing. Exposure to fresh air after a day indoors.”
“You’re proposing we do this after work? At night?”
“Or before a day indoors.”
“You’re proposing we do this at dawn?”
“Or at lunch or at tea. Instead of lunch. Instead of tea. We aren’t getting any younger and it’s time we did something to fend off middle age.”
“You’re thirty-three, Helen.”
“And destined to be reduced to flab if I don’t do something positive now.” She returned to the shopping bags. “There are shoes as well. Somewhere. I wasn’t entirely sure of your size, but you can always return them. Now where could they be…Ah. Here.” She brought them forth, triumphant. “It’s early yet, isn’t it, and we could easily change and have a quick jog round the square a few times. Just the very thing to work ourselves up to…” She lifted her head, face suddenly pensive. She seemed to regard his clothing for the very first time. The dinner jacket, the bow tie, the pristinely shined shoes. “Lord. Tonight. We were going…Tonight…” Her cheeks took on colour and she continued hastily. “Tommy. Darling. We’ve an engagement, haven’t we?”
“You’ve forgotten.”
“Not at all. Truly. It’s the fact I haven’t eaten. I haven’t eaten a thing.”
“Nothing? You didn’t seek sustenance somewhere between Simon’s lab, Harrods, and Onslow Square? Why is it I have difficulty believing that?”
“I had only a cup of tea.” When he raised a sceptical eyebrow, Helen added, “Oh, all right. Perhaps one or two p
“I seem to recall their being filled with…What is it? custard? whipped cream?”
“A dollop,” she asserted. “A pathetic little teaspoonful. That’s hardly enough to be counted as anything and it’s certainly not a meal. Frankly, I’m lucky to be among the living at the moment, with so little to sustain me from dawn to dusk.”
“We shall have to do something about that.”
Her face brightened. “It is dinner, then. Lovely. I thought so. And somewhere quite wonderful because you’ve put yourself into that ghastly bow tie which I know you loathe.” She rose from her shopping bags with renewed energy. “It’s a good thing I’ve not eaten then, isn’t it? Nothing shall spoil my dinner.”
“True. Afterwards.”
“After—?”
He reached for his pocket watch and flicked it open. “It’s twenty-five past seven and we’ve only got till eight. We need to be off.”
“Where?”
“The Albert Hall.”
Helen blinked.
“The philharmonic, Helen. The tickets I nearly sold my soul to get. Strauss. More Strauss. And when you’re tired of him, Strauss. Is this sounding familiar?”
Her face became radiant. “Tommy! Strauss? You’re actually taking me to hear Strauss? This isn’t a trick? We don’t have Stravinsky after the interval? The Rite of Spring or something equally loathsome?”
“Strauss,” Lynley said. “Before and after the interval. Followed by dinner.”
“Thai food?” she asked eagerly.
“Thai,” he replied.
“My God, this is an evening from heaven,” she declared. She picked up her shoes and an armful of shopping bags. “I won’t be ten minutes.”
He smiled and scooped up the remaining shopping bags. Things were moving according to plan.
He followed her out of the drawing room and along the corridor past the kitchen where a glance inside told him that Helen was adhering to her usual mode of indifferent housekeeping. The breakfast dishes were scattered on the work top. The coffee maker’s light still shone. The coffee itself had long since evaporated, leaving a deposit of sludge at the bottom of the glass carafe and the scent of overworked grounds permeating the air. He said, “Helen, for God’s sake. Don’t you notice that smell? You’ve left the coffee on all day.”
She hesitated in the bedroom doorway. “Have I? What a nuisance. Those machines ought to shut themselves off automatically.”
“And the plates ought to dance themselves into the dishwasher as well?”
“It would certainly show good breeding if they did.” She disappeared into her bedroom where he heard her dropping her packages to the floor. He placed his own on the table, took off his jacket, switched off the coffee maker, and went to the work top. Water, detergent, and ten minutes set the kitchen in order, although the coffee carafe would need a good soak to put it right. He left it in the sink.
He found Helen standing alongside her bed in a teal-coloured dressing gown, pursing her lips thoughtfully as she studied three ensembles she’d put together. “Which says ‘Blue Danube followed by seraphic Thai food’ to you?”
“The black.”
“Hmm.” She took a step back. “I don’t know, darling. It seems to me—”
“The black’s fine, Helen. Put it on. Comb your hair. Let’s go. All right?”
She tapped her cheek. “I don’t know, Tommy. One always wants to be elegant at a concert but at the same time not overdressed for dinner. Don’t you think this might be too understated for the one and too overstated for the other?”
He picked up the dress, unzipped it, handed it to her. He went to her dressing table. There, unlike the kitchen, every item was arranged with an attention to order that one might give to assembling surgical instruments in an operating theatre. He opened her jewellery box and drew out a necklace, earrings, two bracelets. He went to the wardrobe and rustled up shoes. He returned to the bed, tossed down jewellery and shoes, turned her to face him, and untied the belt of her dressing gown.
“You’re being excessively naughty this evening,” he said.
She smiled. “But look where it’s got me. You’re taking off my clothes.”
He pushed the gown from her shoulders. It fell to the floor. “You don’t have to be naughty to get me to do that. But I expect you know that already, don’t you?” He kissed her, sliding his hands into her hair. It felt like cool water between his fingers. He kissed her again. For all the frustrations of having his heart enmeshed in her life, he still loved the touch of her, the powdery scent of her, the taste of her mouth.
He felt her fingers working at his shirt. She loosened his tie. Her hands slid to his chest. He said against her mouth, “Helen, I thought you wanted dinner this evening.”
She said, “Tommy, I thought you wanted me dressed.”
“Yes. Right. But first things first.” He brushed the clothing to the floor and drew her to the bed. He slid his hand up her thigh.
The telephone rang.
He said, “Damn.”
“Ignore it. I’m not expecting anyone. The machine will pick it up.”
“I’m on rota this weekend.”
“You’re not.”
“Sorry.”
They both watched the phone. It continued to ring.
“Well,” Helen said. The ringing continued. “Does the Yard know you’re here?”
“Denton knows where I am. He would have told them.”
“We might have already left for all they know.”
“They have the car phone and the seat numbers at the concert.”
“Well, perhaps it’s nothing. Perhaps it’s my mother.”
“Perhaps we ought to see.”
“Perhaps.” She touched her fingers to his face, sketching a pattern across his cheek to his lips. Her own lips parted.
He drew in a breath. His lungs felt oddly hot. Her fingers moved from his face to his hair. The phone stopped ringing and in a moment from the other room a disembodied voice spoke into Helen’s answering machine. It was an only too recognisable disembodied voice, belonging to Dorothea Harriman, secretary to Lynley’s divisional superintendent. When she went to the effort of tracking him down, it always meant the worst. Lynley sighed. Helen’s hands dropped to her lap. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said to her and reached for the telephone on the bedside table, interrupting the message that Harriman was leaving by saying, “Yes. Hello, Dee. I’m here.”
“Detective Inspector Lynley?”
“None other. What is it?”
As he spoke, he reached out for Helen once more. But she was already moving away from him, slipping from the bed and bending to retrieve her dressing gown from where it lay in a heap on the floor.
CHAPTER
3
Three weeks into her new domestic arrangements, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers decided that what she liked best about her solitary life in Chalk Farm was the choices it gave her in the area of transportational anxiety. If she wished to avoid dwelling upon the implications behind twenty-one days of not yet having spoken to a soul in her neighbourhood aside from a Sri Lankan girl called Bhimani who worked the till in the local grocery, all she had to concentrate on was the hair-pulling happiness of her daily commute to and from New Scotland Yard.
Even before she’d acquired it, her tiny cottage had long been a symbol to Barbara. It meant liberation from a life that had held her chained for years to duty and ailing parents. But while making the move had given her the freedom from responsibility that she had dreamed of having, that same freedom brought a solitude that closed in on her at moments when she was least prepared to encounter it. So Barbara had taken a distinct if sardonic pleasure in the discovery that there were two means of getting to work each morning, both of them teeming with teeth-grating, ulcer-causing, and—best of all—loneliness-displacing distractions.
She could fight the traffi
It was a situation based firmly in the realm of cliché: On a daily basis, Barbara could choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. This day, in deference to her car’s increasingly ominous rattles, she’d chosen the sea, wading past her fellow-commuters on escalators, in tunnels, and on platforms, clinging to a stainless steel pole as the train hurtled through the darkness and jostled its riders onto one another’s feet.
She endured the irritants with resignation. Another bloody commute. Another chance to conclude conveniently that her loneliness was really of no account because there was neither time nor energy at the end of the day for social interaction anyway.
It was half past seven when she began her trudge up Chalk Farm Road. She stopped in Jaffri’s Fine Groceries, a shop crammed with so many “delicacies to delight the discriminating palate” that the resulting space was the approximate width of a Victorian railway carriage and just about as well lit. She scrunched past a teetering display of soup tins—Mr. Jaffri was deeply committed to “savoury soups from the seven seas”—and struggled with the glass door to the freezer where a sign declared that row upon row of Häagen-Dazs ice cream represented “absolutely every flavour under the sun.” It wasn’t the Häagen-Dazs she wanted, although salt and vinegar crisps with a chaser of vanilla almond fudge didn’t sound half-bad for dinner. Instead she wanted the one item that sheer mercantile inspiration had prompted Mr. Jaffri to stock, so certain was he that the slow gentrification of the neighbourhood and the inevitable drinks parties that would follow would place it in high demand. She wanted ice. Mr. Jaffri sold it by the bagful, and ever since moving into her new digs, Barbara had been using it in a bucket beneath her kitchen sink as a primitive means of preserving her perishables.