Playing for the Ashes by Elizabeth George
“But you’re thinking of Jimmy now, Inspector. What about then? What about before? He can’t have always been such a sleazo. It had to start somewhere.”
“And the loss of his father from the family isn’t enough of a start for you?”
“Was it enough of a start for you? Or your brother?” Barbara saw him lift his head quickly and knew that she’d gone too far. “Sorry. I was out of line there.” She went back to her pasta. “He says he hated him. He says he killed him because he hated him because he was a bastard and deserved to die.”
“You don’t see that as sufficient motive?”
“I’m just saying there’s probably more to it and the more to it is probably Gabriella. She wouldn’t have a clue how to win him over as his future step-mum, but she’d have plenty of tricks up her sleeve or down her blouse. So let’s say she did it. Half because she gets a kick out of seducing a teenager. Half because it’s the only way she can think to get Jimmy on her side. Only she gets him too much on her side. He wants in where his dad’s been playing. He’s in a lather of sexual jealousy and when he sees the chance, he pops off Dad and expects to have Gabriella for himself.”
“That doesn’t take into account the fact that he thought Gabriella was in the cottage as well,” Lynley pointed out.
“So he says. And he would do, wouldn’t he? It would hardly do for us to know he was giving Dad the chop because he wanted in bed with his mum-to-be. But he knew his dad was there for a fact. He saw him through the kitchen window.”
“Ardery hasn’t given us his footprints by the window.”
“So? He was in the garden.”
“At the bottom of the garden.”
“He was in the potting shed. He could have seen his father from there.” Barbara paused in the act of twirling her pasta. She could see how difficult it would be to gain weight eating this sort of food every day. The effort to get it from plate to mouth was enormous. She evaluated the expression on Lynley’s face. It was shuttered, too shuttered. She didn’t like it. She said, “You’re not backing away from the kid, are you? Come on. We’ve got a confession, Inspector.”
“An incomplete confession.”
“What did you expect on a first go with him?”
Lynley slid his plate towards the centre of the table. He glanced at the planter where the birds still waited hopefully. He threw them a palmful of crumbs.
“Inspector…”
“Wednesday night,” Lynley said. “What did you do after work?”
“What did I…? I don’t know.”
“Think about it. You left the Yard. Were you alone? With someone? Did you drive? Take the underground?”
She thought about it. “Winston and I went for a drink,” she said. “The King’s Arms.”
“What did you have?”
“Lemonade.”
“Nkata?”
“I don’t know. Whatever he usually has.”
“After that?”
“I went home. Had something to eat. Watched a film on the telly. Went to bed.”
“Ah. Good. What film? What time did you watch it? When did it begin? When did it end?”
She frowned. “It must have been after the news.”
“Which news? Which station?”
“Hell, I don’t know.”
“Who was in the film?”
“I didn’t catch the credits. No one special. Except maybe one of the Redgraves, one of the younger ones. And that’s only a maybe.”
“What was it about?”
“Something to do with mining? I don’t know exactly. I fell asleep.”
“What was it called?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You watched a film and you don’t remember the name, the plot, or any of the actors?” Lynley asked.
“Right.”
“Astonishing.”
She bristled at his tone, at its dual implication of inherent superiority and conciliatory understanding. “Why? Was I supposed to remember? What’s this all about?”
Lynley nodded at the waiter to remove his plate. Barbara shovelled a last slithering forkful of tagliatelle into her mouth and waved her own plate off as well. The waiter prepared the table for their main courses, adding cutlery.
“Alibis,” Lynley said. “Who has them. Who hasn’t.” He took another piece of focaccia and began to crumble it as he’d done with the first. Five more birds had joined the original six dancing along the edge of the planter. Lynley tossed them crumbs, oblivious of the fact that he wasn’t endearing himself to either the other diners or the restaurant manager, who glowered at him from the doorway.
Their main courses arrived, and Lynley took up his knife and fork. But Barbara didn’t give her food a glance, instead carrying on the discussion as steam rose from her plate in an aromatic plume. “You’re completely daft and you know it, Inspector. We don’t need to look at anyone’s alibi. We’ve got the boy.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“So let’s get to the bottom of him. Jimmy’s given a confession. Let’s run with it.”
“An incomplete confession,” Lynley reminded her.
“So let’s get it complete. Let’s pick the yob up again, drag him back to the Yard. Grill him. Have at him. Keep up the pressure till he tells the whole story from start to finish.”
Lynley slid a wedge of cinghiale on to his fork. He gave his attention to the birds as he chewed. They were simultaneously patient and persistent, hopping from the junipers to the edge of the planter. Their presence alone bent his will to theirs. He threw them more crumbs. He watched them fall to. One of them captured a chunk of bread the size of a thumbnail and greedily flew off with it, perching on the drip course above a window across the street.
“You’ll only encourage them,” Barbara finally said. “They can fend for themselves, you know.”
“Can they?” Lynley asked contemplatively.
He ate. He drank. Barbara waited. She knew he was sifting through the facts and the faces. There was little point in arguing with him further. Still, she felt compelled to add as calmly as she could, considering the strength of her feelings in the matter, “He was there, in Kent. We’ve got the fibres, the footprints, and the oil from the bike. We’ve got his dabs now and they’re on their way to Ardery. All we need is the brand of that cigarette.”
“And the truth,” Lynley said.
“Jesus Christ, Inspector! What more do you want?”
Lynley nodded at her plate. “Your food’s getting cold.”
She looked down at it. Some kind of fowl in some kind of sauce. The fowl was crispy. The sauce was amber. She poked tentatively at the former with her fork and wondered what it was that she’d ordered.
“Duck,” Lynley said, as if reading her mind. “With apricot sauce.”
“At least it’s not chicken.”
“Decidedly not.” He continued eating. Near them, other diners chatted. Waiters moved silently, pausing to light candles as the evening drew on. “I would have translated,” he said.
“What?”
“The menu. You only needed to ask.”
Barbara sliced into the duck. She’d never eaten duck before. The flesh was darker than she’d expected. “I like to take chances.”
“When chances aren’t necessary?”
“It’s more fun that way. Spice of life and all. You know what I mean.”
“But only in restaurants,” he said.
“What?”
“Taking chances. Running a risk. Following your instincts.”
She set her fork down. “So I’m Sergeant Plod. So there’s room for that. Somebody has to use reason occasionally.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“Then why are you avoiding Jimmy Cooper? What the bleeding hell’s wrong with Jimmy Cooper?”
Once more he attended to his food. He checked the basket, obviously in a search for more bread to give to the birds, but they’d eaten it all. He drank his wine and, with a glance in the direction of t
“Have him back at the Yard at ten tomorrow morning,” Lynley said. “Make sure his solicitor’s with him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And tell the press office we’re bringing in the same sixteen-year-old for a second go-round.”
Barbara felt her jaw drop. She closed it abruptly. “The press office? But they’ll let out the word and those flaming journalists—”
“Yes. That’s right,” Lynley said thoughtfully.
“Where’s his shoes?” was the first question Jeannie Cooper asked when Mr. Friskin ushered Jimmy into the house. She asked it in a high tight voice because from the moment the Scotland Yard detectives had driven off with her son, her insides had begun to squash in on themselves and her hearing had faded in and out so that she could no longer gauge how she sounded. She’d frightened both Sharon and Stan, who’d first clung to her arms and then run from the sitting room when she shook them off violently, saying only, “No. No! No!” in an ever rising voice that they mistakenly believed was directed towards them. Stan had thudded up the stairs. Shar had flown into the back garden. Jeannie had left them both in whatever refuge they’d managed to find. She herself had paced.
The only positive action she’d taken in the first quarter of an hour after Jimmy’s departure was to pick up the phone and ring the only person she knew who could possibly help them at this point. And while she hated to do it because Miriam Whitelaw was the well-spring of every drop of anguish Jeannie had experienced in the last six years since Mrs. Whitelaw had re-entered Kenny’s life, she was also the single person Jeannie knew who could pull a solicitor out of the air at half past five on a Sunday afternoon. The only question was whether Miriam Whitelaw would consider doing so for Jimmy.
She had done, saying only, “Jean. My God,” in a griefstricken voice when Jeannie had first identified herself over the phone. “I can’t believe…” Jeannie knew she couldn’t do with Miriam’s tears, with the thought of weeping and all it implied of the hair-tearing grief she could not feel, would not allow herself to feel, so she said abruptly, “They’ve taken Jim to Scotland Yard. I need a solicitor,” and Miriam had provided one.
Now this solicitor stood before her, one step behind and to the left of Jimmy and she said again, “Where’s his shoes? What of they done to his shoes?”
The Tesco’s bag was dangling from her son’s right hand, but it didn’t bulge enough to contain the Doc Martens. She looked to his feet a second time, for no reason except to reassure herself that her eyes hadn’t deceived her, that he wore only a pair of socks that might have been either grimy white or permanently grey.
Mr. Friskin—whom Jeannie had expected to be middle-aged, stoop-shouldered, charcoal-suited, and bald but who was actually young and lithe, with a bright floral tie pulled askew against his blue shirt and a mane of dark hair that swept off his face and down to his shoulders in the manner of a romance novel hero—answered for her son, but not the question she’d asked. He said, “Mrs. Cooper—”
“Ms.”
“Sorry. Yes. Jim spoke to them before I arrived. He’s given the police a confession.”
Her vision went stark white, then black, like lightning struck in the room. Mr. Friskin kept talking about what would happen next and how Jimmy wasn’t to step a foot outside this house or say a word to anyone not a member of the family without his solicitor right beside him. He said something about understandable duress and added the words juvenile and intimidation and went on with something about the requirements of the Judges Rules, but she didn’t catch it all because she was wondering if she’d actually gone blind like that saint in the Bible except that he’d done just the reverse, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he been struck all at once with sight? She couldn’t remember. It probably hadn’t happened anyway. The Bible was mostly nonsense.
From the kitchen a chair scraped against the lino and Jeannie knew that her brother, who had no doubt listened to every word Mr. Friskin had uttered, was lumbering to his feet. Hearing this, she regretted having rung her parents’ flat the second hour into Jimmy’s visit to Scotland Yard. She’d smoked, she’d paced, she’d gone to the kitchen window and watched Shar huddle like a beggar at the base of the fractured concrete bird bath outside, she’d listened to Stan being sick three times in the loo, and she’d finally broken as much as she would allow herself to break.
She hadn’t spoken to either of her parents because their love for Kenny was a frightening thing and in their eyes it was always her fault that Kenny had ever asked in the first place for time and space from his marriage in order to sort out a life which they believed didn’t need any sorting. So she’d asked for Der and he’d come in a flash, spewing the exact amount of rage, disbelief, and vows for revenge that she needed to hear someone make against the sodding police.
Her vision cleared as Der said, “What? You gone loony, Jim? You talked to them blighters?”
Jeannie said, “Der.”
Der said, “Oy! I thought you was supposed to be there to shut up his mug,” to Mr. Friskin. “I’n’t that the point of having a poncey mouthpiece in the first place? How d’you earn your lolly?”
Obviously used to dealing with clients in emotional twists, Mr. Friskin explained that Jimmy had apparently wanted to talk. He had even talked freely, it seemed, from Mr. Friskin’s insistence on monitoring the tape the police had made of the proceedings. There had been no coercion whatsoever evident—
“You dimwit, Jim!” Der lunged into the sitting room. “You squawked to those wankers on tape?”
Jimmy said nothing. He stood in front of Mr. Friskin like his backbone was slowly melting. His head hung on his neck, his stomach was a cave.
Der said, “Oy! I’m talking to you, dickhead.”
Jeannie said, “Jim, I told you. I told you. Why’nt you listen to me?”
Mr. Friskin said, “Ms. Cooper, believe me. It’s early yet,” to which Der roared, “Early! I’ll show you what’s early. You were s’posed to keep his gob shut tight and now we hear he’s spilled his whole guts. What’re you good for, anyways?” He swung on Jeannie. “What’s the matter with you, Pook? Where’d you find this ponce? And you—” this to Jimmy, pushing past his sister to loom over the boy, “what of you got in your head? Beans? Fish guts? What? You don’t talk to cops. You don’t ever talk to cops. What’d they scare you with, shitface? Borstal? The Scrubs?”
Jimmy didn’t even look like a person, Jeannie thought. He looked like a dirty blow-up doll with the air seeping out of him from a pin prick somewhere. He just stood there mute and let himself be battered, like he knew it would end sooner if he didn’t reply.
She said, “You eat something, Jim?”
Der said, “Eat? Eat? Eat?” each time louder. “He i’n’t going to eat till we get some answers. And we’ll get them right now.” He grabbed the boy’s arm. Jimmy whipped forward like a doll filled with straw. Jeannie saw the heavy muscles on her brother’s arm flex. “Talk to us, yobbo.” Der peered into Jimmy’s face. “Talk to us like you talked to the cops. Talk now and talk good.”
“This isn’t accomplishing anything,” Mr. Friskin said. “The boy’s been through an ordeal that most adults have difficulty recovering from.”
“I’ll show you a deal,” Derrick snarled, flipping his head up into Mr. Friskin’s face.
The solicitor didn’t so much as flinch. He said quietly and with utterly polite reason, “Ms. Cooper, make a decision for us, please. Who would you like to handle your son’s case?”
Jeannie said, “Der,” in admonishment. “Let Jim be. Mr. Friskin knows what’s best.”
Derrick dropped Jimmy’s arm like it was made of slime. “Stupid
Jeannie said to her brother, “Go on up to Stan. He’s been puking like a drunk since Jimmy went off.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her older son raise his head at that, but he’d lowered it again by the time she turned to him.
Der said, “Yeah. Right,” and cast a sneer at both Jimmy and Mr. Friskin before he trudged up the stairs, shouting, “Stan! Oy! You still got your head in the toilet?”
Jeannie said, “Sorry,” to Mr. Friskin. “Der doesn’t always think before he blows off.”
Mr. Friskin made noises like it was an everyday thing to have the uncle of a suspect breathing in his face like a bull that was going for the matador’s cape. He explained that Jimmy had handed over his Doc Martens at the request of the police, that he’d allowed himself to be fingerprinted and photographed, that he’d given them several strands of his hair.
“Hair?” Jeannie’s eyes went to the matted mess on her son’s head.
“They’re either matching it to samples from within the cottage or using it for DNA typing. If it’s the first, their specialists can do it within hours. If it’s the second, we’ve bought ourselves a few weeks.”
“What’s it all mean?”
They were building a case, Mr. Friskin told her. They didn’t have a complete confession yet.
“But they got enough?”
“To hold him? To charge him?” Mr. Friskin nodded. “If they want to.”
“Then why’d they let him go? Is that the end of it, then?”
No, Mr. Friskin told her. That wasn’t the end. They had something up their sleeves. She could rest assured that they would be back. But when that happened, he’d be with Jimmy. There was no chance the police would talk to the boy alone again.
He said, “Have you any questions, Jim?” and when Jimmy slung his head to one side in place of reply, Mr. Friskin handed Jeannie his card, said, “Try not to worry, Ms. Cooper,” and left them.
When the door closed behind him, Jeannie said, “Jim?” She reached for the Tesco’s bag and took it, laying it on the coffee table with deliberate care as if it contained pieces of hand-blown glass. Jimmy stayed where he was, weight on one hip, right arm moving to clasp left elbow. His toes curled against the floor like his feet were cold. “Want your slippers?” she asked him. He lifted a shoulder and dropped it. “I’ll heat you some soup. I got tomato with rice, Jim. You come with me.”