A Taste for Death (25 page)

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her to ask him to recommend books and she persevered with those which, diffidently, he produced for her. At present her bedtime reading was Elizabeth Bowen. The life of her heroines, their private incomes, their charming houses in St John's Wood, their uniformed parlourmaids and formidable aunts, above all the delicate sensitivity of their emotions amazed her. 'Not enough washing-up, that's their trouble,' she told Alan, having in mind the author as well as her characters. But it interested her that she needed to go on reading.

And now it was close to midnight. She was both too excited and too tired to feel much hunger, but she supposed that she ought to cook something light, perhaps an omelette, before she went to bed. But first she switched on the answerphone. And with the first sound of the familiar voice euphoria died to be replaced by a confusion of guilt, resentment and depression. It was her grand-mother's social worker. There were three messages, each at two hourly intervals, controlled professional patience gradually giving way to frustration and, finally, an irri-tation that was close to hostility. Her grandmother, weary of incarceration in her seventh-floor fiat, had gone out to the post office to collect her pension and had come back to find that the window had been smashed and an attempt made to force the door. It was the third such incident in less than a month. Mrs Miskin was now too apprehensive to go out. Would Kate please ring the local authority social services department as soon as she got in, or, if it were after five thirty, ring her grandmother direct. It was urgent.

It always was, she thought wearily. And this was a ridicu-lously late hour at which to ring. But it couldn't wait until morning. Her grandmother wouldn't sleep until she had rung. Her call was answered after the first burr and she guessed that the old lady had been sitting waiting by the telephone.

'Oh, there you are. Fine time to ring. Nearly bloody midnight. Mrs Mason's been trying to get you.'

'I know. Are you all right, Gran?'

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'Course I'm not all fight. Bloody hell, I'm not. When are you coming round?'

'I'll try to look in sometime tomorrow but it won't be easy. I'm in the middle of a case.'

'Better come at three o'clock. Mrs Mason said she'll look in at three. She wants to see you 'specially. Three o'clock, mind.'

'Gran, that's not possible.'

'How'm I goin' to get my shopping, then? I'm not leaving this flat alone, I tell you that.'

'There should be enough in the freezer for at least other four days.'

'I don't fancy that made-up muck. I told you before.' 'Can't you ask Mrs Khan? She's always so helpful.' 'No I can't. She don't go out now, not unless her husband's with her, not since that lot from the National Front were up this way. Besides, it's not fair. More than enough trouble luggin' up her own stuff. The kids have

broken the bloody lift again in case you didn't know.' 'Gran, is the window mended?'

'Oh, they've been and mended the window.' Her grand-mother's voice suggested that this was no more than an

unimportant detail.

She added:

'You gotta get me out of this place.'

'I'm trying, Gran. You're on the waiting list for a one-person flat in one of those blocks with a warden, sheltered housing. You know that.'

'I don't need any bloody warden. I ought to be with my own kith and kin. See you tomorrow then at three

o'clock. Mind you come. Mrs Mason wants to see you.' She put down the receiver.

Kate thought: Oh God, I can't cope with this again, not now, not just at the beginning of a new case.

She told herself with angry self-justification, that she wasn't irresponsible, that she did what she could. She had bought her grandmother a new refrigerator topped with a small freezer and visited every Sunday to stock it with meals for the week ahead only, more often than not, to be

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met with the familiar complaint:

'I can't eat that fancy stuff. I want to do my own shopping. I want to get out of here.'

She had paid for a telephone to be installed and had taught her grandmother not to be afraid of it. She had liaised with the local authority and arranged for a weekly visit from a home help to clean the flat. She would wil-lingly have cleaned it herself if her grandmother would have tolerated the interference. She would take any trouble, spend any money, to avoid taking her grand-mother to live with her in Charles Shannon House. But that, she knew, was what the old lady, in alliance with her social worker, was inexorably pressing her to accept. And she couldn't do it. She couldn't give up her freedom, Alan's visits, the spare room where she did her painting, her privacy and peace at the end of the day for an old woman's impedimenta, the ceaseless noise of her television, the mess, the smell of old age, of failure, the smell of Ellison Fair-weather Buildings, of childhood, of the past. And now, more than ever, it was impossible. Now, with her first case with the new squad, she needed to be free.

. She was seized with a spurt of envy and resentment against Massingham. Even if he had a dozen difficult and demanding relatives no one would expect him to have to cope. And if she did have to take time off from the job he would be the first to point out that, when the going got really tough, you couldn't rely on a woman.

8

In her bedroom on the second floor Barbara Berowne lay back on her bank of pillows and stared ahead at the television screen mounted on the wall opposite her un-curtained four-poster. She was waiting for the late-night movie, but had switched on the set as soon as she had got into bed, and was now tuned to the last ten minutes of a

political discussion. She had turned down the sound so Iow that she could hear nothing, but she still gazed intently at the restless mouths as if she were lip-reading. She re-membered how Paul's mouth had tightened with dis-approval when he had first seen the television set, mounted on its swivel, obtrusively over-large, spoiling the wall and dwarfing into insignificance the two Cotman watercolours of Norwich Cathedral each side of it. But he had said nothing, and she had told herself defiantly that she didn't care. But now she could watch the late film without being uneasily aware that he was there in the next room, perhaps lying sleepless in rigid disapproval, hearing the muted screams and gunfire like the noisy manifestations of their own subtler, undeclared warfare.

He had disliked, too, her untidiness, an unconscious protest against the impersonality, the obsessive neatness of the rest of the house. In the light of her bedside lamp she gazed untroubled over the muddle in the room; the clothes strewn where she had dropped them; the sheen of her satin dressing-gown thrown across the foot of the bed, the grey skirt splayed fan-like over a chair, her pants lying like a pale shadow on the carpet, her brassiere hanging by one strap from the dressing table. What an indecent, silly garment it looked, thus casually discarded; so precisely shaped and moulded and looking surgical for all its lace and delicacy. But Mattie would tidy up her things in the morning, gather up her underclothes for washing, hang jackets and skirts in the wardrobe. And she would lie with the breakfast tray on her knees, and watch; then get up, bath, dress and face the world, as always immaculate.

It had been Anne Berowne's room and she had moved into it after their marriage. Paul had suggested that they might change bedrooms but she hadn't seen why she should sleep in a smaller inferior room, deprived of the view of the square garden, simply because this had been Anne's bed. First it had been Anne's room, then it was Paul's and hers, then it was hers alone, but always with the knowledge that he was sleeping next door. And now it was hers absolutely. She remembered the afternoon when

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they had first stood in the bedroom together after their

marriage, his voice so formal that she had hardly re cognzied it. He could have been showing round a prospec tive purchaser.

'You may care to choose different pictures; there are

some in the small salon. Anne liked watercolours and the

light here is good for them, but you don't have to keep

them.'

She hadn't cared about the pictures which had seemed

to her rather dull, insignificant English landscapes by paint ers Paul seemed to think she ought to recognize. She still

didn't care, not even enough to change them. But the

bedroom had, from her first possession, taken on a different

personality; softer, more luxurious, scented and feminine.

And gradually it had become as cluttered as an indiscrimin ately stocked antique shop. She had gone round the house

and moved up to her room the items of furniture, the oddly

assorted objects which had taken her fancy, as if obsessively

raping the house, leaving no space for those rejected but

insidious ghosts. A Regency two-handed vase under a

glass dome filled with multi-coloured flowers intricately de vised from shells, a gilt-bronze Tudor wood cabinet decor ated with porcelain ovals of shepherds and shepherdesses, a

bust of John Soane on a marble pedestal, a collection of

eighteenth-century snuff boxes, taken from their showcase

and now casually littering her dressing table. But there were

still ghosts, living ghosts, voices on the air which no object,

however desired, had power to exorcise. Propped against

the scented pillows she was back in her childhood bed, a

12-year-old lying rigid and sleepless, hands clutching the

bedclothes. Snatches of endless argument half-heard over

weeks and months, then only partly understood, had come

together into a coherent whole, refined by her imagination

Il and now unforgettable. First her mother's voice:

tl 'I thought you'd want custody of the children. You're

I1 their father.'

l nd leave you free of responsbfity to enjoy yourself n

B' California? Oh no, my dear, you were the one who wanted

l children, you take them. I suppose Frank didn't bargain

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for two stepchildren? Well, he's got them. I hope he likes them.'

'They're English. Their place is here.'

'What did you tell him? That you were coming without encumbrances? A little shop-soiled, darling, but un-encumbered? Their place is with their mother. Even a bitch has some maternal instincts. You take them or I fight the divorce.'

'My God, they're yo. ur children. Don't you care? Don't you love them?'

'I might have done if you'd let me and if they'd been less like you. As it is, I'm frankly indifferent. You want freedom, so do I.'

'All right, we'll share. I'll take Barbie, you have Dicco. A boy's place is with his father.'

'Then we're in a difficulty. You'd better consult the father, that is if you know which one it was. By all means let him have Dicco. I won't stand in his way. If there was anything of me in that boy I'd have recognized it. He's grotesque.'

'My God, Donald, you bastard!'

'Oh no, my dear, I'm not the bastard in this family.' She thought: I won't listen, I won't remember, I won't think about it, and pressed the volume button, letting the rancorous voices batter at her ears. She didn't hear the door open, but suddenly there was an oblong of pale light and Dicco stood there, wrapped in his knee-length dressing gown, his springing hair a tangled halo. He stood watching her in silence, then moved barefooted across the room and the bedsprings bounced as he settled himself close

against her. He said:

'Can't you sleep?'

She turned off the set, feeling the familiar guilt. 'I was thinking about Sylvia and father.' 'Which one? We've had so many.' 'The first. Our proper father.'

'Our proper father? Our improper father. I wonder if he's dead yet. Cancer was too good for him. Don't think about them, think about the money. That's always a

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I

comfort. Think about being free, your own person. Think how well you always look in black. You aren't frightened, are you?'

'No, of course not. There's nothing to be frightened about. Dicco, go back to bed.'

'His bed. You knew that, didn't you? You know where I'm sleeping. In his bed.'

'Mattie won't like that, nor will Lady Ursula. Why couldn't you sleep in the spare room? Or go back to Bruno?'

'Bruno doesn't want me in the fiat. He never did. There isn't room. And I wasn't comfortable. You want me to be comfortable, surely? And I'm getting a little tired of Bruno. My place is here. I'm your brother. This is your house now. You're not being very welcoming, Barbie. I thought you'd want me near you, in case you wanted to talk in the night, confide, confess. Come on, Barbie, con-fess. Who do you think killed him?'

'How do I know? Someone broke in, I suppose, a thief, another tramp, someone who wanted to steal the church

collection. I don't want to talk about it.'

'Is that what the police think?'

'I suppose so. I don't know what they think.'

'Then I can tell you. They think it was an odd church for a thief to choose. I mean, what was there worth stealing?'

'There are things on the altar, aren't there? Candle-sticks, a cross. There were in the church where I mar-ried.'

'I wasn't there when you were married, Barbie. You didn't invite me, remember?'

'Paul wanted a quiet wedding, Dicco. What does it matter?'

And that, she thought, was another thing Paul had cheated her out of. She had imagined a grand wedding, herself floating up the aisle of St Margaret's Westminster, the sheen of white satin, a veil like a cloud, the flowers, the crowds, the photographers. Instead he had suggested a registrar's office and when she had protested had insisted

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on their local parish church and the quietest of ceremonies, almost as if the wedding were something to be ashamed of, something furtive and indecent.

Dicco's voice came to her in a Iow insinuating whisper: 'But they don't keep them on the altar any more, not at night. Crosses and candlesticks, they lock them away. Churches are dark, empty. No silver, no gold, no lights. Nothing. Do you suppose that's when their God comes down from his cross and walks about, goes up to the altar and finds that it's only a wooden table with a piece of fancy cloth pinned round it?'