A Banquet of Consequences (71 page)

“You read it straightaway?”

“There in the station, sitting in reception, because I couldn’t work out why Lily wanted me to have it. And then I saw. And I knew . . . You see, I had to make amends to him, India. I suppose I had to make amends to myself as well when you come to it. That was the only thing left as far as I could tell. I’d not seen that the Wording had been about
her
all along, the only way he could tell me what she was doing to him, and I had to make amends.”

India stared at her husband. She drew a breath, and it caught in her chest like a sudden occlusion. She said, “Amends,” as the only thing she
could
say. She willed herself out of this place and away from him. But she’d already set out on this journey with Charlie, and she knew that it was waiting to be completed.

“I never meant to harm Clare,” Charlie said. “God save me. I didn’t. And when she died . . . and then the police . . . I can’t even think how she ended up with Mum’s toothpaste.”

“Oh my God, Charlie.”

“So it’s all down to me. Do you see? That decent woman dead, at
my
hand, India, and—”

“Please,” India said. She spoke faintly. She wished him to stop. And then after a moment because it was part of the journey after all, “How did you manage it?”

“I was down there to make peace between her and Alastair after the dedication of Will’s memorial. Four times. Maybe five. Because of Sharon Halsey and his affair with her. It was all easy. I’d done the research here in London, an Internet café and a search engine and that was all it took. I just needed to leave a research path on their computers in Dorset. And not everything on the same day, of course. Which is why I went there more than once.”

“And Lily . . . Does she know?”

“Not everything. She came on board directly I ordered it. I knew from the site what day it would be delivered. All she had to do was hang about the bakery to receive the package. That was a risk but even if she missed the delivery, had Mum seen her name on the package, she wouldn’t’ve opened it. She would’ve rung the police. That would’ve been bad for Lily if the cops then opened the package, but I reckoned she’d take real care to hang about the bakery well out of sight once she knew the delivery was intended to see justice done for Will. And that’s what happened. She sent the package on to me. She never knew what was inside.” He looked at the floor where his bare feet looked as defenceless as he himself had been as a six-year-old in his mother’s hands. “I
never
meant . . . I still don’t know . . . Clare.” And then without apology but with heavy grief, “God how I wish it had been Mum.”

“But why did she confess? Charlie, did she actually confess? Is that the truth?”

“I expect it is,” he said. “She’d’ve worked it out. Alastair says the cops played out what they had against her, including something Clare had put on tape, something she’d learned from Sumalee. I don’t know what. But if that’s true—and I have no reason to doubt poor Alastair—Mum would’ve known that I was the only one who could have managed it all from start to finish.”

“But why would she . . . ? That still doesn’t explain why.”

“Alastair told me the last thing she said to him before they remanded her,” Charlie said. “‘Tell Charlie what’s happened’ is what she told him. ‘Ring Charlie,’ she said. I think she wants to make amends for everything and this is how she’s doing it.”

India said nothing to this, for it seemed there was nothing left to say. Charlie was putting himself into her hands. The way she saw it, in those hands, too, she held the journal that could destroy him. But as it turned out, Charlie saw something more that needed to be said between them, and he was the one who spoke once more.

“So you see,” he said.

She roused herself at this. “What?”

“Why I was . . . how I failed you . . . and why. The why of it most of all. It’s useless to say sorry, but that’s how it is. Some things are past forgetting. I knew this all along, India, which makes my sin against you all the worse. I’m bloody well trained to know that one doesn’t run or try to hide or simply never get round to mentioning . . . The past, India. It does that Shakespeare thing. It shakes its gory locks at one no matter how one tries to avoid it. I married you knowing that I was next to useless as a man. There was no help for me—”

“Don’t say that, Charlie.”

“—but I hoped for the best. Still do, in fact, and isn’t that a bloody good laugh? I don’t blame you for a single decision you’ve taken. In your place, I hope I would have done the same.”

“Nat and I,” she said.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “It doesn’t matter actually.” He looked thoughtful, as if he was considering the words he’d just said. “Christ, I hope that’s a good thing, India. I mean that nothing quite matters as it once did.”

“What I was going to say is that we’ve ended our relationship, Charlie,” India said. “What I was going on to say is that I want to come home.”

“You can’t mean that,” he told her. “It’s good of you to think it. I appreciate, even, what it implies about what you intend to do.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you know it all now and you can do with me and with the information what you wish.”

“I know that, Charlie. And what I wish is to come home.”

“That’s mad.”

“I don’t say it isn’t. But I want to be with you. I want to try. I want to see if there’s any way—with what I know now and what you know now—that we can go on.”

“You and I,” he said as if he needed still to clarify. “I, the killer of Clare Abbott. I, the poisoner of her friend.”

“No. You, the man who failed his brother once and couldn’t bear to fail him another time.”

MARYLEBONE

LONDON

When she arrived in Marylebone High Street—not a destination that had ever been high on her bucket list—Barbara Havers reckoned it was just the sort of place that Dorothea Harriman would aspire to make a regular haunt, if she wasn’t haunting it already. It featured a plethora of boutiques interspersed among trendy coffeehouses, upmarket restaurants, vintage clothing shops, and high-end retailers selling everything from must-have kitchenware to designer handbags the approximate size of dog kennels. A narrow thoroughfare, the street was reflective of the days when hansom cabs tilted along cobblestones—long since paved over by tarmac—to deposit well-dressed ladies and gentlemen in the vicinity of Regent’s Park. Now and at this late hour of the day, its pavements were teeming with the after-work crowd. They made for the wine bars, the restaurants, and the pubs, texting as they blindly walked, seeming oblivious to the commercial delights that surrounded them.

Barbara had not come to be part of this mix. Rather she had an appointment with Rory Statham who’d suggested they meet at a shop that, to Barbara’s chagrin, turned out to be a lingerie boutique. She had to pick something up after work, Rory told her, and as the shop was generally not crowded, there was little chance they’d miss each
other in the mass of pretty young things seeking other pretty young things for casual hookups in the area. Since she’d only given Barbara the name of the place, Barbara had no clue what she was in for when she shouldered her way through the door into an embarrassing display of bustiers, suspender belts, corsets, suggestive albeit tasteful nightwear, and knickers of a design clearly meant to bring to life some bloke’s panting wet dream. Had Barbara not seen Rory at the shop counter paying for something being placed into a coy little bag with lots of tissue sprouting from it, she would have turned tail at once. She had, after all, her reputation to consider.

As it was, she sauntered to the back to join the other woman. Rory was signing a credit card receipt while the bustier-clad shop assistant at the till appeared to be doing her best to look welcoming of Barbara who was clearly not the sort of woman who frequented this sort of fancy-knickers establishment. She said brightly, “Be right with you, madam,” which caused Rory to look in Barbara’s direction. She smiled and said, “Ah. You’ve found me. Let me just finish this up and we can be off.”

The finishing up took very little time. Barbara spent it looking at a pair of knickers with matching brassiere and suspender belt—did one actually
wear
a suspender belt if one did not truly have to? she wondered—while doing her best not to gape at the astronomical cost of these bits of fabric. As a woman who bought her undergarments only at Marks & Spencer and only if the elastic on what she was wearing was irreversibly done for, Barbara found it impossible to embrace the idea that someone would quite happily pay more than five pounds (and that was in a sale) for—at least at M & S—an entire packet of knickers. But such appeared to be the case. She idly wondered if Dorothea Harriman knew about this shop and she made a mental note to tell her the next time they met up in one corridor or the other.

They’d done so, however briefly, upon her return from Dorset late that very morning. Barbara had only just undergone receiving what went for congratulations from Superintendent Ardery at the end of a job, as Ardery had put it, “adequately done, Sergeant Havers.” Along with, “I’m happy to know you and Sergeant Nkata got on well together,” she’d added, “and I hope I see more of this kind of work
from you in the future,” as her parting shot. She’d offered no warm fuzzies, and she hadn’t ceremoniously ripped up Barbara’s transfer request. But Barbara hadn’t expected her to do so. Since that signed request—no matter how reluctantly she’d signed it—was guaranteed to keep Barbara on the very straight and the exceedingly narrow, Ardery would know pure madness lay in the direction of destroying the document. She still had Barbara where she wanted her. Pending a very unlikely miracle, she would keep her there.

Dorothea had seemed to understand this as Barbara had approached her along the corridor. Perhaps, Barbara thought, it was in her walk. She tried to look jaunty to avoid becoming corn in the rumour mill at the Met.

Coming abreast of her, Dorothea said, “I’ve heard you had a good result, Detective Sergeant Havers.” And to Barbara’s nod, she went on to say, “Onward. I do have to say this. I’m
completely
sorry.”

That, Barbara thought, seemed rather harsh: that Dorothea Harriman had wished failure upon her. She was about to make a remark destined for the regret-it-later pile heaping in the background of her life when Dorothea made matters clear by going on.

“Speed dating? It was a terrible idea. I shouldn’t have put you through it. I didn’t meet anyone that evening either although I did think at first there were several possibilities.” She shifted her weight to one hip, always a preparatory move on her part, signaling a proper natter was called for. “It’s the blokes who show up,” she went on. “It’s the fact that they lie about their ages and expect it won’t make a difference to a woman.”

“No worries,” Barbara told her. “Just another experience to spice up my autobiography when I finally write it, eh? Got to have ’em or the reading’s dull. That’s always been my motto. Or at least it is now.”

Harriman smiled. She looked, in fact, far too cheered upon hearing Barbara’s declaration. She said, “I’m so pleased because I’ve had a think about things. I’ve come up with tap dancing. What d’you say?”

“About tap dancing?” Barbara wondered if they were free-associating. Matches/fire, cowboys/Indians, gun/shoot. That sort of thing. She went with, “Fred Astaire comes to mind. I mean, obviously, there’ll be recent blokes as well, but somehow . . . Gene Kelly
and that film about the rain? No. Fred Astaire. It’s definitely tap dancing/Fred Astaire.”

Dorothea frowned. “Actually, I meant in place of ballroom dancing. No partner needed. Not that you wouldn’t have a partner if you wanted one, of course. I don’t mean to imply that. But it seemed a good way to ease into a new activity since one can, obviously, tap-dance alone.” She considered this. “Come to think, one
must
tap-dance alone, yes? Your legs and feet would be all tangled up otherwise. ’Course, that doesn’t mean you can’t tap-dance at someone’s side, naturally. But that comes later. At first, it’s alone.”

Barbara narrowed her eyes. “What’s this all about, Dee?”

“Our next venture into the greater world, of course. Now, don’t say no. I can see you want to, and I understand. The shopping didn’t work out well and speed dating was a
complete
disaster. But consider the dual benefit of tap dancing before you say no: One meets an entirely new group of people, and one exercises at the same time.”

A steadying breath was called for. Barbara took one and said, “Do you actually
see
me with tap shoes on, Dee?”

“No more than I see myself,” she admitted. “But considering that autobiography, Detective Sergeant . . .”

“For God’s sake, I was joking.”

“So am I. What I mean is that one’s whole
life
is an autobiography, don’t you agree? Whether it gets written or not doesn’t make a difference. What goes
into
it, though? That’s what counts.”

“I never saw you as a philosopher, Dee.”

“It’s just occurred to me,” she admitted. “I think there’s a point that I’ve been missing and . . . well, I have to say it. I think you might’ve been missing it as well. It’s an
auto
biography because we write it ourselves. I don’t write yours and you don’t write mine. So what I’m saying is that
my
autobiography is due to include tap dancing and I’m wondering if you’d like yours to do the same.”

“Can you
see
me tap dancing?” Barbara repeated.

“More to the point,” Dee countered, “can you see yourself? Or better said, do you
want
to see yourself with tap shoes on? Which is, let’s face it, another way of saying d’you want to see yourself as different from who you are now? No, no,” she added as Barbara opened
her mouth to reply. “Don’t answer me yet. Have a think about it. You can tell me tomorrow.”

She fluttered her fingers and tapped in her stilettos in the direction of her desk. Barbara shook her head but it was, she admitted, in admiration and not dismissal.

Now, as Rory turned to her with her purchase, Barbara said, “What d’you think of tap dancing?”

“Excellent exercise,” she replied at once. “Are you considering it?”

“I hadn’t thought to.”

“Let me know if you decide to give it a go. I may want to join you. Now,”—with a nod of her head at the door and the street beyond—“shall we decamp to somewhere less . . .” She lowered her voice. “Less inclined to make one run screaming for the Darcy book? It’s all male fantasy, this. I’ve bought something for my mum. Her birthday, and Dad plans to take her to Italy. I thought a bit of whimsy”—she lifted the bag—“might be in order. Although the thought of my mum in a leather bustier . . .” She laughed. “Some things don’t bear imagining.”

“Well, it’s for your dad anyway, isn’t it?” Barbara asked.

“I suppose it is.”

They went back into the street, where a short jaunt took them to a restaurant in the modern minimalist style where the menu prices kept the faint at heart at bay. Rory told Barbara that she liked the bar here. It was on the top floor in the open air. As the evening was fine, they could have drinks and Barbara could tell her what she didn’t want to tell her over the phone.

This didn’t take long, and it had to be said that Rory Statham was not surprised by the revelation of Caroline Goldacre’s guilt. Nor was she surprised by the motive behind what the woman had confessed to doing. She had, Rory said, always thought there was something not right in Caroline’s excessive grieving over her younger son. It wasn’t that the grief was unceasing. One didn’t expect a mother to walk away easily or even at all from the suicide of her child. But it was the undiffering nature of Caroline’s grief that had caused Rory’s suspicions about the woman. And despite her words to the contrary, Rory went on, Clare must always have suspected that there was more at work behind that grief than Caroline’s reaction to a dreadful loss.

“Clare was setting Caroline up for . . . I s’pose we could call it double blackmail,” Barbara finished. “We think it went like this: ‘You decide to reveal anything about my catting round with married blokes, you even
think
about trying to stop me from writing a book my publisher’s waiting for, I ruin your life by letting it be known that you drove your son Will into flinging himself off a cliff.’ We’re fairly certain that’s what Clare intended. And once Caroline heard about Clare’s plans to speak to Charlie in order to check out Sumalee’s story, she had to go.”

“So Clare hadn’t yet spoken to Charlie?”

“Not a whisper of it anywhere. But she intended to. She’d already been trying to get something worthy from Francis, from Caroline’s mum, from women who knew her in town. But nothing they had was useful or good enough when it came to stopping Caroline in her tracks. It was only when Sumalee told her about Will that Clare saw she finally had what she needed to wrest control of her life away from Caroline.”

“I wish she’d told me everything,” Rory said. “We could have . . . I don’t know . . . done something?”

“What? The UK’s leading feminist was making the big nasty in hotels with married blokes she met on the Internet?” Barbara asked. “What were you lot supposed to make with that?”

“Declare it research for her book?” Rory seemed to ask herself the question rather than Barbara.

“Not bloody likely to go down a treat when it had to do with betraying her fellow females, eh?”

“There is that.” Rory sounded ineffably sad.

It came to Barbara then that there was no sign of Arlo, and she wondered about this. She’d never seen the other woman without her assistance dog. She asked what it meant that he was not at her side. “Nothing wrong with him, is there?” Barbara asked. “He’s quite a nice little bloke, that Arlo.”

No, no, there was nothing wrong with him, Rory said. He was, in fact, at present waiting for her in her car back at the publishing house. Rather anxious to see her walk off by herself, but he was adjusting to the idea. “I’ve been trying a bit each day to get along without
him,” Rory told her. “I can’t depend on a dog forever just to be able to leave my flat. At some point I’m going to need to get on with life without assistance any longer.”

There was good sense in this, and Barbara saw that immediately. Seeing it, she was forced to wonder how Rory’s words applied to herself.

It wasn’t till half past nine that she reached Chalk Farm. She managed to find the miracle of a parking space in front of the church at the bottom of Eton Villas, and she paused for a moment on the pavement to listen to the music from a concert going on inside the building. It came to her that in addition to church services, these concerts had been taking place for all the time that she’d lived in the area. She wondered why she’d never bothered to attend one. She wondered if the moment had come when she ought to see what they were all about.

The music ended. It was followed by applause. The applause went on and someone inside called out, “Encore! Encore!,” a cry taken up by more than one person until the music began again. Barbara hadn’t a clue what was being played. If it wasn’t Buddy Holly, she had to admit that she was hopeless.

She headed up the street. Lights were on in the flats contained within the Edwardian villa behind which sat her tiny dwelling, all save within the ground-floor flat where darkness prevailed as it had done for months. The little path along the side of the building was lit, as always, by motion-detecting lights. They flashed on the moment Barbara headed in the direction of her hobbit-sized home. There was no additional light above her door since the bulb had long since burned out and she had long since failed to replace it, but she was used to wrangling with her keys and the door lock, so it was no difficult matter to get inside.