Playing for the Ashes (12 page)

“Do what?” Miriam Whitelaw asked.

Havers looked as if she was sorry she had spoken. “Suicides,” Lynley said. “They generally put everything in order
fir
st.”

“They generally leave a note as well, don’t they?” Mrs. Whitelaw said.

“Not always. Especially if they want the suicide to look like an accident.”

“But it
was
an accident,” Mrs. Whitelaw said. “It had to be an accident. Ken didn’t smoke. So if he were going to kill himself and make it look like an accident, why would he have used a cigarette?”

To cast suspicion on someone else, Lynley thought. To make it look like a murder. He answered her question with one of his own. “What can you tell us about Gabriella Patten?”

Mrs. Whitelaw didn’t answer at
fir
st. She seemed to be evaluating the implications behind Lynley’s having asked the question on the heels of her own. She said, “What do you want to know?”

“Is she a smoker, for example?”

Mrs. Whitelaw looked towards the window in which they all were reflected against the nighttime panes. She appeared to be trying to picture Gabriella Patten both with and without a cigarette. She finally said, “She never smoked here, in this house. Because I don’t. Ken doesn’t…didn’t. Otherwise, I don’t know. She may be a smoker.”

“What was her relationship to Fleming?”

“They were lovers.” And to Lynley’s raised eyebrows, she added, “It wasn’t general knowledge. But I knew. We talked about it most nights—Ken and I—and had done since the situation first developed between them.”

“The situation?”

“He was in love with her. He wanted to marry her.”

“And she?”

“She said at times that she wanted to marry him.”

“At times only?”

“That was her way. She liked to keep him off guard. They’d been seeing each other since…” Her hand rose to touch her necklace as she thought. “It was sometime last autumn when they began the affair. He knew straightaway that he wanted to marry her. She was less certain.”

“She’s married, I understand.”

“Separated.”

“When they began seeing each other?”

“No. Not then.”

“And now?”

“Formally?” she asked.

“And legally.”

“She had her solicitors ready, as far as I know. Her husband had his. According to Ken, they’d met five or six times, but they hadn’t reached an agreement on anything.”

“But a divorce was pending?”

“On her part? Probably, but I couldn’t say.”

“What did Fleming say?”

“Ken sometimes felt she was dragging her feet, but he was like that…impatient to have things settled in his life as soon as possible. He was always that way when he made up his mind about something.”

“And in his own life? Had he settled things?”

“He’d finally talked to Jean about divorcing, if that’s what you mean.”

“When was this?”

“About the same time Gabriella left her husband. Early last month.”

“Did his wife agree to the divorce?”

“They’ve lived apart for four years, Inspector. Her agreement wasn’t really an issue, was it?”

“Nonetheless, did she agree?”

Mrs. Whitelaw hesitated. She shifted in the chair. A spring creaked beneath her. “Jean loved Ken. She wanted him back. That never changed all the years he was gone, so I can’t imagine it changed just because he finally mentioned divorce.”

“And Mr. Patten? What do you know of him? Where did he stand in all this? Did he know about his wife’s relationship with Fleming?”

“I doubt it. They tried to be discreet.”

“But if she was staying in your cottage,” Sergeant Havers put in, turning from the wardrobe where she was systematically going through Fleming’s clothes, “that pretty much makes an announcement of the situation, wouldn’t you say?”

“As far as I know, Gabriella didn’t tell anyone where she was staying. She needed a place to live once she left Hugh. Ken asked me if she could use the cottage. I agreed.”

“Your way of giving tacit approval to their relationship?” Lynley asked.

“Ken didn’t ask for my approval.”

“If he had?”

“He’s been like my son for years. I wanted to see him happy. If he believed that marriage to Gabriella was the source of his happiness, that was
fin
e with me.”

It was an interesting answer, Lynley thought. There was a world of meaning beneath the word
believed
. He said, “Mrs. Pat-ten’s gone missing. Have you any idea where she might be?”

“None at all, unless she’s gone back to Hugh. She threatened to do that whenever she and Ken had a row. She might have made good on her words.”

“Had they had a row?”

“I doubt it. Ken and I usually talked it over when they had.”

“They quarrelled frequently?”

“Gabriella likes to have things her way. Ken does as well. Occasionally they found it difficult to compromise. That’s all.” She seemed to see where the questions were heading, because she added, “Really, you can’t think Gabriella…That’s unlikely, Inspector.”

“Who knew she was at the cottage, aside from you and Fleming?”

“The neighbours would have known, of course. The postman. The milkman. People from Lesser Springburn if she went into the village.”

“I mean here, in London.”

“No one,” she said.

“Besides yourself.”

Her face was grave but unoffended. “That’s right,” she said. “No one besides myself. And Ken.”

She met Lynley’s eyes as if she were waiting for the accusation and expecting him to make it. Lynley said nothing. She claimed Kenneth Fleming was like a son to her. He wondered about that.

“Ah. Here’s something,” Sergeant Havers said. She was opening a narrow folder that she had taken from a pocket of one of the jackets. “Plane tickets,” she said and looked up. “Greece.”

“Is there a flight date on them?”

Havers held them towards the light. Her forehead wrinkled as she scanned the writing. “Here. Yes. They’re for—” She did a mental calculation with the date. “Last Wednesday.”

“He must have forgotten them,” Mrs. Whitelaw said.

“Or never intended to take them in the
fir
st place.”

“But his luggage, Inspector,” Mrs. Whitelaw said. “He had his luggage. I watched him pack. I helped him carry his things to the car. Wednesday. Wednesday night.”

Havers tapped the tickets pensively against her open hand. “He may have changed his mind. Postponed the trip. Delayed his departure. That would explain why his son never phoned when Fleming failed to show up to fetch him for the
fli
ght.”

“But it doesn’t explain why he packed as if he intended to go on in the
fir
st place,” Mrs. Whitelaw insisted. “Or why he said, ‘I’ll send you a card from Mykonos,’ before he drove off.”

“That’s easy enough,” Havers said. “For some reason he wanted you to think that he was still going to Greece. Right then.”

“Or perhaps he didn’t want you to think he was going to Kent
fir
st,” Lynley added.

He waited as Mrs. Whitelaw made an effort to assimilate the information. The fact that it was an effort for her was made evident by the distress that caused her gaze to falter. She tried, and failed, to fix on her face an expression that would communicate to them that she was unsurprised by the knowledge that Kenneth Fleming had lied to her.

Just like a son, Lynley thought. He wondered if Fleming’s lie made him more or less son-like to Mrs. Whitelaw.

OLIVIA

W
hen the tour barges pass, I can feel our barge do a little bob-and-sway on the water. Chris says I imagine it because those are singles and leave practically no wake while ours is a double and impossible to move. Still, I swear I can feel the rise and fall of the water. If I’m having a lie down and I’ve made my room dark, it’s like being in the womb, I expect.

Farther down, in the direction of Regent’s Park, all the barges are singles. They’re painted brightly and lined up something like railway carriages along both sides of the canal. The tourists going to Regent’s Park or Camden Lock take photographs of them. They probably try to imagine what it’s like, living on a barge in the middle of a city. They probably assume that one can forget one’s in the middle of a city altogether.

Our barge isn’t photographed often. Chris built it to be practical, not to be coy, so it’s not much to look at, but it does for a home. I spend most of my time here in the cabin. I watch Chris do the sketches for his mouldings. I take care of the dogs.

Chris hasn’t returned from his run yet. I knew he’d be an age. If he got as far as the park and took the dogs inside, he won’t be back for hours. But, if that’s the case, he’ll also bring a take-away meal back with him. Unfortunately, it’ll be tandoori something. He’ll forget I don’t like it. I won’t blame him for that. He’s got a lot on his mind.

So do I.

I can’t get away from seeing his face. This is something that would have made me rave at one time—the idea of a person I don’t even know having the cheek to make an ethical demand upon me, asking me to have principles, for God’s sake. But curiously this unspoken request has given me the oddest sense of peace. Chris would say it’s because I’ve
fin
ally reached a decision and am acting on it. Perhaps he’s right. Mind you, I don’t relish the thought of sharing any of my dirty laundry with you, but I’ve seen his face again and again—I
keep
seeing his face—and his face is what’s made me come to terms with the fact that if I declare myself responsible, then I must explain how and why.

You see, I was something of a disappointment in my parents’ lives although who I was and what I did affected my mother far more than Dad. That’s to say that Mother was more forthcoming with her reactions to my behaviour. She labelled me in capitals: Such A Disappointment. She talked in terms of washing her hands of me. And she dealt with the trouble I caused in her usual manner: by distracting herself.

You read my bitterness, don’t you? You probably won’t believe me when I say I feel little enough of it now. But I did then. I felt bitter in spades. I’d spent a childhood watching her run from this meeting to that fund-raising event, listening to her tales of the poor-but-gifted in her fifth form English class, and trying to increase her level of interest in me through various means, all categorised under the heading Olivia Being Difficult Again. Which indeed I was. By the time I was twenty years old, I was as angry as a cornered warthog and about as attractive. Richie Brewster was my ploy to communicate my feelings of disgruntlement to Mother. However, I didn’t see that at the time. What I saw was love.

I met Richie on a Friday night in Soho. He was playing saxophone in a club called Julip’s. It’s closed down now, but you probably remember it, about three hundred square feet of cigarette smoke and sweating bodies in a cellar on Greek Street. In those days, it sported blue lights on the ceiling, which were very in vogue despite the fact that they made everyone look like heroin addicts on the prowl for a score. It boasted the presence of the occasional minor royal with
paparazzi
in attendance. Actors, painters, and writers hung out there. It was the place to go if you wanted to see or be seen.

I didn’t want either. I was with friends. We’d come down from university for a concert in Earl’s Court, four twenty-year-old females looking for a break before exams.

We ended up in Julip’s by chance. There was a crowd on the pavement waiting to get in, so we joined them to see what was what. It didn’t take long to discover that about half a dozen joints were being passed round. We indulged ourselves.

These days, cannabis is like Lethe for me. When the future looks the worst, I smoke and drift. But then, it was a key to good times. I loved getting high. I could take a few hits and be someone new, Liv Whitelaw the Outlaw, unafraid and outrageous. So I was the one who tracked down the source of the weed: three blokes from Wales, medical students out for an evening of music, drinks, dope, and twat. It was clear they had access to the
fir
st three already. When they met us, they had access to the rest. But the numbers were off, as we all could see. And unless one of the blokes was willing to do a double poke, one of the women was going to end up in the cold. I’d never been much good at pulling men. I assumed from the first that the loser would be me.

None of the blokes appealed to me anyway. Two of them were too short. The third had breath that smelled like a sewer. My friends could have them.

Once we were inside the nightclub, they involved themselves in some serious groping on the dance floor. That was part of the scene in Julip’s, so no one paid much attention. I mostly watched the band.