Missing Joseph Part 35

"Glennaven-he's Bradford's bishop- didn't know. I phoned Truro but couldn't get through to the bishop there. And his secretary wasn't forthcoming with anything other than the basic fact: a boating accident. He wasn't free to give out information on the telephone, he said. What sort of boat it was, what the circ.u.mstances were, where the accident occurred, what the weather was like, if Sage was with her when it happened...nothing."

"Protecting one of their own?"

"He didn't know who I was, after all. And even if he did, I hardly have the right to the information. I'm not CID. And what we're engaged in here is hardly an official endeavour, even if I were."

"But what do you think?"

"About the idea that they're protecting Sage?"

"And through him the reputation of the Church."

"It's a possibility. The connection to the woman taken in adultery is hard to ignore, isn't it?"

"If he killed her..." Lynley mused.

"Someone else might have waited for an opportunity for revenge."

"Two people alone on a sailboat. A rough day. A sudden squall. The boom shifts in the wind, cracks the woman on the head, and she's overboard in an instant."

"Could that sort of death be faked?" St. James asked.

"A murder posing as an accident, you mean? No boom at all but a blow to the head? Of course."

"What poetic justice," Deborah said. "A second murder posing as an accident. It's symmetrical, isn't it?"

"It's a perfect sort of vengeance," Lynley said. "There's truth to that."

"But then who is Mrs. Spence?" Deborah asked.

St. James listed possibilities. "A former housekeeper who knew the truth, a neighbour, an old friend of the wife."

"The wife's sister," Deborah said. "His own sister even."

"Being urged back to the Church here in Winslough and finding him a hypocrite she couldn't endure?"

"Perhaps a cousin, Simon. Or someone who worked for the Bishop of Truro as well."

"Why not someone who was involved with Sage? Adultery cuts both ways, doesn't it?"

"He killed his wife to be with Mrs. Spence but once she discovered the truth, she wouldn't have him? She ran off?"

"The possibilities are endless. Her background's the key."

Lynley turned his pint gla.s.s thoughtfully on the table. Concentric rings of moisture marked its every position. He'd been listening but felt disinclined to dismiss all his previous conjectures. He said, "Nothing else peculiar in his background, St. James? Alcohol, drugs, an unseemly interest in something disreputable, immoral, or illegal?"

"He had a pa.s.sion for Scripture, but that doesn't seem out of character in a priest. What are you looking for?"

"Something about children?"

"Paedophilia?" When Lynley nodded, St. James went on. "Not a hint of that."

"But would there be a hint, if the Church was protecting him and saving its own reputation to boot? Can you see the bishop admitting to the fact that Robin Sage had a penchant for choirboys, that he had to be moved-"

"And he moved continually, according to the Bishop of Bradford," Deborah noted.

"-because he couldn't keep his hands to himself? They'd get him help, they'd insist upon that. But would they ever admit to the truth in public?"

"I suppose it's as likely as anything else. But it seems the least plausible of the explanations. Who are the choirboys here?"

"Perhaps it wasn't boys."

"You're thinking of Maggie. And Mrs. Spence killing him to put an end to...what? Molestation? Seduction? If that's the case, why wouldn't she say?"

"It's still murder, St. James. She's the girl's only parent. Could she depend upon a jury seeing it her way, acquitting, and leaving her free to care for the child who depends upon her? Would she take that risk? Would anyone? Would you?"

"Why not report him to the police? To the Church?"

"It's her word against his."

"But the daughter's word..."

"What if Maggie chose to protect the man? What if she wanted the involvement in the first place? What if she fancied herself in love with him? Or fancied he loved her?"

St. James rubbed the back of his neck. Deborah sank her chin into the palm of her hand. Both of them sighed. Deborah said, "I feel like the Red Queen in Alice. We need to run twice as fast, and I'm already out of breath."

"It's not looking good," St. James agreed. "We need to know more, and all they need to do is hold their tongues to keep us permanently in the dark."

"Not necessarily," Lynley said. "There's still Truro to consider. We've plenty of room to manoeuvre there. We've got the wife's death to dig into, as well as Robin Sage's background."

"G.o.d, that's a hike. Will you go there, Tommy?"

"I won't."

"Then who?"

Lynley smiled. "Someone on holiday. Just like the rest of us."

In Acton, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers turned on the radio that sat on the top of the refrigerator, and interrupted Sting in the midst of warbling about his father's hands. She said, "Yeah, baby. Sing it, you hunk," and chuckled at herself. She liked listening to Sting. Lynley claimed her interest was rooted solely in the fact that Sting appeared to shave only once a fortnight, in a display of putative virility that was geared to attract a largely feminine following. Barbara pooh-poohed this. She argued that, for his part, Lynley was a musical sn.o.b, saying that if a piece had been composed within the last eighty years, he wouldn't offend his aristocratic ears by exposing them to it. She herself had no real predilection for rock and roll, but given her preference, she always chose it over cla.s.sical, jazz, blues, or what Constable Nkata referred to as "honky Grandma tunes" which usually featured something from the forties inoffensively rendered by a full orchestra with a heavy emphasis on the strings. Nkata himself was devoted to blues, although Havers knew he'd sell his soul in an instant-not to mention his growing collection of CD's-for just five minutes alone with Tina Turner. "Never you mind she's old enough to be my mum," he'd say to his colleagues. "My mum look like that, I'd'a never left home."

Barbara turned up the volume and opened the refrigerator. She was hoping that the sight of something inside would stimulate her appet.i.te. Instead the odour of five-day-old plaice made her retreat to the other side of the kitchen, saying, "Jesus b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," with some considerable reverence while she considered how best to be rid of the leaking package of fish without having to touch it. She wondered what other malodorous surprises were waiting for discovery, wrapped in foil, stored in plastic cases, or brought home in cartons for a hasty meal and long since forgotten. From her position of safety, she spied something green climbing the edges of one container. She wanted to believe it was leftover mushy peas. The colour seemed right, but the fi brous consistency suggested mould. Next to it, a new life-form seemed to be evolving from what once had been a plate of spaghetti. In fact, the entire refrigerator looked like an unsavoury experiment-in-progress, conducted by Alexander Fleming with another trip to Stockholm in mind.

With her eyes fastened suspiciously on this mess and the back of one index finger pressed beneath her nose to breathe against shallowly, Barbara edged over to the kitchen sink. She rustled through cleansers, scrubbing pads, brushes, and a few stiffened lumps that had once been dish-cloths. She unearthed a carton of rubbish bags. Armed with one of these and a spatula, she advanced to do battle. The plaice went into the sack first, splatting against the floor and sending up a death howl in the form of an odour that made Barbara shudder. The mushy peas-c.u.m-antibiotic went next, followed by the spaghetti, a wedge of double Gloucester that appeared to have grown some sort of interesting beard, a plate of petrifi ed bangers and mash, and a carton of pizza which she could not get up the nerve to open. Leftover chow mein joined the mess, as did the spongy remains of half a tomato, three grapefruit halves, and a carton of milk she distinctly remembered having purchased last June.

Once Barbara developed a rhythm to this catharsis of comestibles, she decided to carry it to its logical conclusion. Anything that wasn't sealed in a jar, permanently and professionally pickled, or posing as a condiment unaffected by the pa.s.sage of time-out with the mayonnaise, in with the ketchup-joined the plaice and its companions-in-decomposition. By the time she was done, the refrigerator shelves were bare of anything that made even the smallest promise of a meal, but she wasn't a mourner for the edible loss. Whatever appet.i.te she may have been trying to stimulate with her sentimental journey through the territory of ptomaine had long since disappeared.

She slammed the door home and tied up the rubbish bag with its length of wire. She opened the back door, shoved the bag outside and waited for a moment to see if it would develop legs and slither off to join the rest of the household rubbish on its own. When it didn't, she made a mental note to handle it later.

She lit a cigarette. The scent of the match and of the burning tobacco did much to mask the residual foul odour of food gone bad. She lit a second match and then a third, while all the time she inhaled the smoke from the cigarette as deeply as she could.

Not a total loss, she thought, nothing for tea or supper, but look at it this way: another job's done. All she had to do was scrub down the shelves and wash out the single drawer and the refrigerator would be ready to sell, a little old, a bit unreliable, but priced accordingly. She couldn't take it with her when she moved to Chalk Farm-the studio was far too tiny to accommodate anything larger than munchkin size-so she was going to have to clean it out eventually, sooner or later...when she was ready to move...

She went to the table and sat, her chair noisily sc.r.a.ping one bare metal foot against the sticky linoleum floor. She twirled the end of her cigarette between thumb and index finger and idly watched the progress of the paper burning, as the tobacco it held continued to smoulder. The occasion of having to deal with this refrigerated putrefaction had, she realised, informed against her. One more job done meant one more item ticked off the list, which put her one step closer to shutting the house, selling it, and taking herself off to an unknown new life.

By alternate days she felt ready for the move and unaccountably terrified of the change it implied. She'd been to Chalk Farm half a dozen times already, she'd paid her deposit on the little studio, she'd talked to the landlord about different curtains and about the installation of the telephone. She'd even got a brief glimpse of one of her fellow tenants, sitting in a pleasant square of sun at the window of his lower ground-level flat. Yet even while that part of her life-marked FUTURE-drew her steadily onwards, the larger part-marked PAST-kept her standing in place. She knew that there was no turning back once this house in Acton was sold. One of the last ties to her mother would be severed.

Barbara had spent the morning with her. They'd walked to the hawthorn-lined common in Greenford and sat on one of the benches that surrounded the play area, watching a young mother twirling a laughing toddler on a round-about.

It had been one of her mother's good days. She recognised Barbara, and although she slipped three times and called her Doris, she didn't argue the point when Barbara gently reminded her that Auntie Doris had been dead and gone for nearly fifty years. She merely said with a wispy smile, "I forget, Barbie. But I'm good today. Shall I come home soon?"

"Don't you like it here?" Barbara asked. "Mrs. Flo likes you. And you get on well with Mrs. Pendlebury and Mrs. Salkild, don't you?"

Her mother scrabbled at the ground beneath her feet, then held her legs out straight, like a child. She said, "Like my new shoes, Barbie."

"I thought you might." They were high-top trainers, lavender with silver stripes on the side. Barbara had found them in a rainbow selection in Camden Lock Market. She'd bought a pair for herself in red and gold- snickering at the thought of Inspector Lynley's horrified face when he saw them on her feet- and although they hadn't had any in her mother's size, she'd bought the lavender ones anyway because they were the most outrageous and consequently the most likely to please. She'd thrown in two pairs of purpleand-black argyle socks to fill up the s.p.a.ce between her mother's feet and the shoes, and she'd smiled at the pleasure Mrs. Havers had taken at unwrapping the package and fishing through the tissue for her "supprise."

Barbara had got into the habit of bringing a little something with her on these biweekly visits to Hawthorn Lodge where, for the past two months, her mother had been living with two other elderly women and Mrs. Florence Magentry-Mrs. Flo-who cared for them. Barbara told herself that she did it for the joy of seeing her mother's face brighten at the sight of a gift. But she knew each package served as coin to purchase her freedom from guilt.

She said again, "You like it here with Mrs. Flo, don't you, Mum?"

Mrs. Havers was watching the toddler in the round-about. She was swaying to some interior tune. "Mrs. Salkild messed her pants last night," she said confi dentially. "But Mrs. Flo didn't even get crossed, Barbie. She said, 'These things happen, dearie, as we get older so you mustn't worry yourself to bits.' I didn't mess my pants."

"That's good, Mum."

"I helped as well. I got the washing flannel and the plastic basin and I held it just so, so Mrs. Flo could clean her. Mrs. Salkild cried. She said, 'I'm sorry. I couldn't tell. I didn't know.' I felt bad for her. I gave her some of my chocolates after. I didn't mess my pants, Barbie."

"You're a big help to Mrs. Flo, Mum. She probably couldn't get along without you."

"She does say that, doesn't she? She'll be sad when I leave. Am I coming home today?"

"Not today, Mum."

"Soon though?"

"But not today."

Barbara sometimes wondered if it would be better to leave her mother in Mrs. Flo's more-than-capable hands, if she should simply pay her expenses, disappear, and hope that her mother would forget in time that she had a daughter not far away. She did continual flipflops on the efficacy of these visits to Greenford. She went from believing they did nothing more than put momentary plasters on the sores of her own guilt at the expense of disrupting Mrs. Havers' routine to convincing herself that her steady presence in her mother's life would keep her from complete mental disintegration. There was no literature available on either position as far as Barbara knew. And even if she had tried to find it-which she couldn't bring herself to do-what difference would some conveniently removed social scientist's theories make? This was her mother, after all. She couldn't abandon her.

Barbara stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray on the kitchen table and counted the stubs that lay crushed there already. Eighteen cigarettes she'd smoked since this morning. She had to quit. It was unclean, unhealthy, and disgusting. She lit another.

From her chair, she could see down the corridor all the way to the front door. She could see the stairway to the right, the sitting room to the left. It was impossible to avoid noticing how far along the renovation of the house had moved. The interior was painted. New carpet was laid. Fixtures were repaired or replaced in the bathroom and the kitchen. The stove and oven were cleaner than they had been in twenty years. The linoleum floor still needed to be stripped completely and then rewaxed, and wallpaper still waited to be hung. But once those two jobs were taken care of, along with washing or replacing the curtains which hadn't been touched as far as Barbara knew since her family's move to the house in her childhood, she could turn her efforts to the exterior.

The back garden was a nightmare. The front garden was nonexistent. And the house itself needed ma.s.sive effort: There were gutters to replace, woodwork to paint, windows to wash, a front door to refinish. And while her savings were rapidly dwindling and her own time was limited because of her job, things were still moving slowly forward according to her original plan. If she didn't do something to slow down the wheels of this entire project-initially taken on to guarantee she would have sufficient funds to keep her mother at Hawthorn Lodge indefinitely-the time for being on her own would be fast upon her.

Barbara wanted that independence, or so she kept telling herself. She was thirty-three years old, she'd never established a life of her own unattached to her family and their infinite needs. That she could do so now ought to have been a cause for jubilation at a release from bondage. But somehow it wasn't and it hadn't been since the morning she'd driven her mother to Greenford and settled her into a crisp, new life with Mrs. Flo.

Mrs. Flo had prepared for their arrival in a way that should have set every worry to rest. A welcome sign draped over the narrow stairway's banister, and there were flowers in the entry. Upstairs in her mother's room a porcelain carousel spun round slowly, playing "The Entertainer" in light chiming notes.

"Oh Barbie, Barbie, look!" her mother had breathed, and she rested her chin on the chest of drawers and watched the tiny horses rise and fall.

There were flowers in the bedroom as well, irises in a tall white vase.

"I thought she might need a special moment," Mrs. Flo said, smoothing her hands against the bodice of her pin-striped shirtwaister. "Ease her in gentle so she knows we mean to make her welcome. I've coffee and poppy seed cakes down below. Bit early for elevenses, isn't it, but I thought you might have to be off fairly quick."

Barbara nodded. "I'm working on a case in Cambridge." She looked round the room. It was so clean, crisp, and warm, with the sunlight falling across the daisy carpet. "Thank you," she said. She wasn't referring to the coffee and cakes.

Mrs. Flo patted her hand. "Don't you worry about Mum. We'll do right by her, Barbie. May I call you Barbie?"

Barbara wanted to tell her that no one but her parents had ever used that name, that it made her feel childlike and in need of care. She was about to correct her, saying, "It's Barbara, please," when she realised that to do so would be to break the illusion that somehow this was home and these women-her mother, Mrs. Flo, Mrs. Salkild, and Mrs. Pendlebury, one of whom was blind and the other another victim of dementia-const.i.tuted a family into which she herself was being offered membership if she cared to accept it. And she did.

So it wasn't so much the prospect of permanently abandoning her mother that caused Barbara to drag her feet from time to time as it became more apparent that her dream of being on her own was about to become reality. It was the prospect of her own abandonment.

For two months now, she had been coming home to an empty house, something she had longed for during the years of her father's lingering illness, something she had deemed completely indispensable when she found herself left to deal with her mother after his death. For what seemed like ages she had sought a solution to caring for her mother, and now that she had one apparently designed by heaven-G.o.d, was there another Mrs. Flo anywhere else on earth?-the focus of her plans had shifted from dealing with an ageing parent to dealing with the house. And when the house offered her nothing more to deal with, she'd be face to face with dealing with herself.

Alone, she would have to start thinking about her isolation. And when the King's Arms emptied of her colleagues in the eve-ning-when MacPherson went home to his wife and five children, when Hale went to do increasingly dubious battle with the solicitor who was handling his divorce, when Lynley dashed off to have dinner with Helen, and Nkata drifted off to take one of his six squabbling girlfriends to bed-she'd meander slowly to St. James's Park Station, kicking at rubbish that blew in her path. She'd ride to Waterloo, change to the Northern Line, and hunch on a seat with a copy of The Times, feigning interest in national and world events to disguise her growing panic at being alone.

It's no crime to feel this way, she kept telling herself. You've been under someone's thumb for thirty-three years. What else would you expect to feel when the pressure's gone? What do prisoners feel when they're let out of gaol? How about liberated, she answered herself, how about like dancing in the street, like having their hair worked over by one of those posh hairdressers in Knightsbridge who have their windows all draped in black to show off blowup snaps of gorgeous women with geometric haircuts that never grow out scraggly or get blown by the wind.

Anyone else in her position, she decided, would probably be br.i.m.m.i.n.g with plans, working feverishly to get this house in shape to sell so that she could start a new life which, no doubt, would begin with a wardrobe change, a body make-over courtesy of a personal trainer who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger with better teeth, a sudden interest in make-up, and a telephone answering machine to keep track of the messages from a score of admirers all waiting to entwine their lives with hers.

But Barbara had always been a bit more practical than that. She knew change came slowly if it came at all. So right now, the move to Chalk Farm represented nothing more than unknown shops to get used to, unknown streets to navigate, unknown neighbours to meet. All of it would be done on her own, with no voice to hear in the morning save her own, no friendly noise of someone puttering about, and especially no sympathetic companion both ready and eager to listen to her a.s.sessment of how things had gone on a given day.

Of course, she'd never had a sympathetic companion involved in her life in the past, only her parents who awaited her nightly arrival, not to engage her in avid conversation but to wolf down supper and get back to the telly where they watched a succession of American melodramas.

Still, her parents had been a human presence in her life for thirty-three long and unbroken years. While they hadn't exactly filled her life with joy and a sense that the future was an unwritten slate, they had been there, needing her. And now no one did.

She realised that she wasn't so much afraid of being alone as she was of becoming one of the nation's invisibles, a woman whose presence in anyone's life had no particular importance. This house in Acton-especially if she brought her mother back to it-would eliminate the chance of her discovering that she was an unnecessary fixture in the world, eating, sleeping, bathing, and eliminating like the rest of mankind, but otherwise expendable. Locking the door, handing over the key to the estate agent, and going on her way meant risking the revelation of her own unimportance. She wanted to avoid that as long as she could.

She crushed out her cigarette, got to her feet, and stretched. Eating Greek food sounded better than did stripping and waxing the kitchen floor. Lamb souvlakia on rice, dolmades, and a half-bottle of Aristide's marginally drinkable wine. But first the rubbish bag.

It was where she had left it, outside the back door. Barbara was grateful to see that its contents hadn't managed to climb the evolutionary scale from mould and algae to anything with legs. She hoisted it up and trudged along the weed-sprung path to the rubbish bins. She lowered the bag inside just as the telephone began to ring.

"What d'you know, my date for next New Year's," she muttered. And then, "All right, I'm coming," as if the caller were telegraphing impatience.

She caught it on the eighth double ring, picking it up to hear a man say, "Ah. Good. You're there. I thought I might have missed you."

"You mean you don't miss me?" Barbara asked. "And here I was worried you'd be incapable of sleeping with the two of us so many miles apart."

Lynley chuckled. "How goes the holiday, Sergeant?"

"In fits and starts."

"You need a change of scenery to take your mind off things."

"Could be. But why do I think this is heading in a direction I might learn to regret?"

"If the direction's Cornwall?"

"That doesn't sound half bad. Who's buying?"