Blind Date (6 page)

Diana shifted on the bench, rearranging her jacket, noting the frayed cuff. Her white hair was almost luminous. Emma's hair would have been like that if she had ever lived so long.

“She was jealous of Emma. Terribly.”

“I don't remember that stage. I remember the times when she was over-protective. She adored her.”

“Oh yes, all right, she did. Not when Emma was a baby, though. She tried to throw her into the sea.”

“Did she?”

“Twice. Once in the pram, once without.”

Diana had begun to load the coffee cups on the tray, quietly preparing to move. It was becoming cold. A light from the dining-room window, where the curtains were half-drawn, illuminated the lavender in the flowerbed.

“I must go in,” she said. “Caroline Smythe's leaving tomorrow, and I've mostly managed to avoid her, but she could come bounding out here anytime now, looking for company. She'd love to see you. Mull over old tragedies, oh God, she does love tragedy. She'll tell you about her son, I suppose. That terrible boy. You two were friends,” she added accusingly.

He frowned
, as if disliking the memory.

“Yes. For two weeks a year I became a bad boy, like him. Full of city habits. Stealing sweets and apples. Letting down tyres. Throwing stones at the cliff in the hope of a landslide. Wicked stuff. What was his name?”

“Surely you remember? Such a handsome pair you were,” she said, rising. The dog at her feet growled. Diana shushed it and put a finger to her own lips. She whispered, “Caroline Smythe offered to keep Elisabeth company … can you imagine?” They both smiled, and began to sneak round the far edge of the lawn, avoiding the dining-room windows. Their feet were silent on the lawn, shoulders brushing the overhanging shrubs which were Diana's pride, the air thick with the scent of the stocks. They made casual but careful progress. It was ten-thirty at night, could have been the hour before dawn. Until a masked figure crashed out of the bushes, leapt into their path and stood before them, legs wide apart, the gun held in both hands to steady it, the voice low and threatening.

“Freeze!”

They froze. The tray carrying cups, transferred to Steven's hands, fell with a crash. He swore. Diana made an automatic gesture of putting up her hands. She had almost tripped over the trug with the weeds left over from this morning; she looked at the feet in front of her. Socks, but no shoes.

“You're not going to send her away!” the voice growled on as the hand holding the gun began to quiver. “You're not, you're not, you're NOT!” and on the final repetition the voice broke into a childish shriek. A light came on from upstairs, visitors' side, then another. Diana forced herself into a high, reassuring laugh, carried on at length. Apart from that, they stood in silence.

“Stop
it, Matthew. Please,” Steven said, calmly.

One by one, the lights went out. Mrs. Diana Kennedy's paying guests retired early. Restraining themselves from the company of children and dogs, even if their gracious landlady did not.

And in bed, more than half asleep against the sound of the sea, Elisabeth heard only the laughter and found herself dreaming of jewels. Bright gemstones, turning into traffic lights below her window rather than stars above.

She imagined getting up once the laughter ceased. Packing her bag, going away now, instead of waiting another week for her elusive strength to come back. Thinking of whom she might have betrayed.

O
ne by one, the lights went out. Two men sat by the window, watching the monolithic London tower block three hundred yards away as family after family went to bed. Those who did go to bed. A dull light hung over the near distant city, the glow of a million lives.

“So you won't help, then? You set me up for this, even got me as far as Devon, and you won't help me?”

“I didn't say that. I didn't say wouldn't, I said couldn't. Not the same thing.” Jenkins raised a slightly shaking hand. “Fingers burned, you see. To the stumps. I've still got a job. Want to keep it, such as it is. Wife gone, bairns gone … What I've got is this. Not much, but mine to use and abuse.”

“I'm not going to fiddle with that, you know I'm not, as if I could or would. I just want to know more about Elisabeth Kennedy. You set me up. You sent me down to keep an eye on her.” Joe emphasized, copying the older man's speech.

“She got
the wrong man,” the elder said, after a pause. The shaking of the hand was not drink, more the result of the coffee, consumed by the pint in dainty thimbles which looked as if they had been stolen from a Chinese restaurant. Everything else in this single man's abode looked borrowed, begged or donated from someone who would not miss it.

“But did she get the wrong man?” the younger asked.

“Yes, she may have done. He knew who was murdered, how it was done, with details, but that was all.”

“You led her to him. You set them up, too. It's what you do, Jenks. Use people.”

“All right then, it was
me
got the wrong man. And then set the wrong woman to find him.”

“I don't understand. How did you find the man?”

Every time, he had to act as if he did not know. It was a routine they went through, so that each conversation would reveal more. The older man waved his arm, vaguely. DI Jenkins. He looked more like a stage policeman, grizzled by booze and life, a caricature of what he actually was. Joe could not imagine he was a great advertisement for the joys of an alcohol-free life. He would sit at the back of an AA meeting like a portent of doom.

“Oh, suspicion. A man who was lonely and violent, fitted the bill. Don't tease, you bastard. You remember, you fucker.
You
found him. You made the fucking connection.”

Joe nodded, apologetically.

“
You
, Mr. Fucking photographer. You were the one came in and told us that you'd taken a picture for a woman who was making a claim to criminal injuries. Who looked a lot like poor, dead Emma Davey, whose pretty picture you had seen in the
Evening Standard. You
told us that your little, photogenic victim had told you about meeting this guy through a lonely hearts column. He went berserk on her. Tried to chop off a finger with a ring on it. With his teeth. We showed you all our pretty pictures, didn't we, Joe? Because we'd used you before as a freelance. Because you knew about injuries and I trusted you.”

There was
an explosion of coughing. The man was no advertisement for cigarettes either.

“So, we got his box number from the lonely hearts and set young Elisabeth on him …”

“I always thought you had more than that. And more than me. Hoped you did.”

The coughing sounded like a wood saw, mixed with the sound of an axe.

“Oh yes, I did. You just don't want the responsibility. I had the man you'd found, a man with a propensity to violence. Not only a horrible little man with a penchant for blondes, but also a friend of the fucking family! Friend of Emma's, anyway: quite a regular visitor. One of the waifs and strays she seemed to collect. Oh, she did love ‘em. The plainer the better, and God, Jack was certainly plain. He even lived in the fucking area. Go for it, I said. Had to be him. Fucking go for it.”

“Straightaway? Just like that? Get Elisabeth to snare him, answer his next advertisement, make him confess?”

Jenkins heaved his large, shrivelled frame further up his chair, impatient.

“No-one mentioned seduction, not as such, flattery, perhaps. It was a police investigation. Nor was she
ordered.
She was an insistent volunteer. The last I would have chosen, not only because the murdered woman was her sister, but because Elisabeth Kennedy was never a very good policewoman. How
was
Devon, by the way? I hope you appreciated the countryside. How is she?”

Joe clasped
his hands together, to keep them still. “I'd have thought she would be good for police work. Stubborn. That's how she is now. Sick and stubborn.”

Jenkins nodded, as if he knew that already.

“Oh, she was reckless and brave, and terrified at the same time, never an ideal candidate. You don't want individualists, starting too old. God alone knows how she got picked for a uniform in the first place. But there she was, and she had this stunning resemblance.”

“Not identical, surely? A stronger face.”

Jenkins grinned. All his smiles seemed to have a touch of malice. “Lizzie didn't think they were identical. She thought we selected her because she was good. Didn't do her any favours to realize, after it was over that she was picked for the way she looked. Namely, enough like her kid sister to fulfill his fantasy, but not as pretty.”

“I can't remember quite what the kid sister looked like,” Joe said. “Not directly.”

“Fucking liar. I showed you all the pictures, after she was dead. You were in love with that image. Emma Davey was beautiful. Not, I gather, as Miss Kennedy is now.”

Joe was suddenly defensive. Remembered that bold, hurt face on the gurney, caught in the flash.

“Oh, I don't know about that. It would take more than a few scars to mar that face. Neck's twisted to the left, though.”

“Serve her right. She was always turning round to see what was behind, always frightened, but she never learned to cover her back.”

The man laughed without real mirth, the hand still shaking as he raised the cup. The habits of the alcoholic still led him to excess. He had little use for sleep. The ceiling above where he sat was yellow with nicotine.

“Poor cow
. Thin Lizzie. All her efforts came to nothing. Bloody Jack gave enough hints of guilt, all right, not quite a confession, almost, but the judge wasn't having any. End of case, end of career. The last in a long line of Elisabeth's wee failures. She resigns, goes home to her mother and gets mugged in a Devon village, I ask you. How's that for irony? Silly bitch, useless as ever. Still beautiful, you say? Do I sense a tenderness for the lady? Not that she was ever a lady. Discreet, yes, never told her family a single bloody thing, but never a lady. Do you fancy her?”

“Lord, no. I'm just curious. I went all the way down there because you asked me to go. You get in touch after all this time … ask the impossible …”

The man stirred, looked Joe in the eye. One of his own, pale eyes, watered. There was a crust of yellow round the lid.

“Well, why not? You're half to blame. And you're sneaky. You could check on her without being obvious, hiding behind your camera. You wouldn't even have to bang on the door. And you know what? You're a kind of pervert yourself. I might have fingered you for a killer, except you like things already dead. Or half dead. You won't take pretty pictures of living things, not you. Not even kittens or puppies. You like things which can't move. Pervert.”

Joe shifted beneath the watery gaze. The room was warm.

“I don't understand,” he said, realizing he was sounding plaintive and naive, “how her family never knew about her involvement. They knew about a man being charged and rapidly acquitted. They knew about a supposed confession. They never seemed to know how Elisabeth was involved.”

The old man looked at him, pityingly. “You don't think Lizzie travelled under her own name, do you? Prat. I suppose the family would have got to know if the trial had gone the distance, but it didn't. Lizzie was anonymous from the start. She was at the finish.”

He put
a finger to his lips in a parody of discretion. Shhh. Then he got up and stretched, without enthusiasm.

“She shouldn't have gone so far,” he murmured. “That's what did for the judge. Activities beyond the call of duty, poor old fart. Couldn't see the truth in pillow talk. Goes back to Adam and Eve and the snake. Curiosity, you said? Killed the cat, my boy. Killed it. Now, fuck off.”

“Do I continue? Find out what I can?”

“That's up to you. Suit your fucking self.” Then he added, so faintly Joe could scarcely hear, “Please.”

Down, down, down. Joe walked down more steps than he could count. One day, he would count the steps. For now he wondered how it was that a wheezy man, who looked so much older than his years, ever managed to climb so far, but this was only his third visit and it would not be his last, so he did not count today. Tonight, on the verge of midnight, he had another place to go; people to meet. Then he would go home. Somebody else's home, but still home. Jenkins had not quite specified trespass as part of the task, but he had supplied Elisabeth's address. Drunk on caffeine, Joe's head was still reeling from the cricket on the television which had stood in the corner of the room, silent, while both eyes went towards it, constantly. Someone in white, dressed in the garments of a lab assistant, ran languidly over a stretch of green. Joe had never understood the mysteries of cricket. He did not want to take pictures of people in movement: he knew his limitations. He loved portraits. Eyes in statues and paintings and patients, skin. They made him a living. Made him hungry for the faces which were still alive. And that was why he so liked hers. Alive, full of despair and never as pretty as her sister.

T
hen there
was light and there they were, the lads, sitting in splendour. Mike, looking suave, Rob looking cocky in his shiny shoes but in that state of drunkeness which was no longer light-hearted, John Jones, all specs and similar, so shy he would run from his own shadow. It was funny how Joe could assume a different persona when meeting the lads. He presumed they all did. They had nothing in common apart from being single, and the fact that they had all worked in the same building, on the edge of the city somewhere, a greenhouse enclave, the executive and peculiarly male end of a big company which Joe had long since left. But while he was there they had crossed the barrier into a kind of friendship, each finally admitting to difficulties with girls. At least, pony-tail Joe had never actually had difficulties with girls, only difficulties with life. He suspected that Rob, a divorcee with attitudes to women which might have come out of the ark, had always had difficulties with girls; likewise John, otherwise known as Owl because of his specs. Such wits they were. Rob and the Owl, late twenties, the one boasting of wide experience, the other of virtually none. But he could never quite fathom why Mike, just on the right side of thirty, was still in the game. They joined together to go out cruising and drinking, because that was what they did. All of them seemed to need a team for moral support. Or maybe this companionship was one of those accidental things, formed on the spur of the moment and somehow self-perpetuating, because two of them wanted to continue it, Rob, in particular, always planning the next meeting, the others falling in, not wishing to renege on promises and, besides, what was the harm?