Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (28 page)

They would check, of course, and find it was true. It hardly helped him. “The Merry Cookhouse”—it pained him to utter the words— “where I had lunch was just before the roadworks, if that’s any use.”

“It may be. The relevant time is between 3:30 and 4:30 P.M. Did anyone see you enter the house in Glebe Terrace?”

How could he have forgotten, even for a moment? Relief flooded him. It was like drinking something warm and sweet when in a state of shock. “The woman next door—it’s 56a, I think—she gave me her key.”

“And now,” said Damien, “perhaps you’ll let Mr. Melcombe-Smith go.”

When the phone rang or when someone came to the front door, every time these things happened, Michelle thought it was the police. The joke aspect of being treated with suspicion had gone. She’d got it into her head it would be impossible to find witnesses to her and Matthew’s whereabouts that Friday afternoon and, though she wasn’t usually a nervous woman, she saw them both high on the list of suspects. Miscarriages of justice did happen, people were mistakenly tried and falsely imprisoned. She’d only once encountered the police before and that was when the Jarveys’ car was broken into and the radio stolen.

Matthew did his best to reassure her: “Darling, I think you must believe that when they say an inquiry is routine it
is
routine.”

“I hated being questioned like that. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

That made him laugh, but not unkindly. “No, it wasn’t. The worst thing that’s ever happened to you was when you thought I was going to die through my stupid food fads.”

“Not stupid,” Michelle said hotly. “You don’t mean that. You mean your illness.”

“Well, it’s not really fear of being arrested that’s upsetting you, is it? It’s not being suspected of a crime or interrogated, it’s indignation at Fiona’s behavior.”

“More than that, Matthew.” She went close behind the chair where he sat reading the
Spectator,
and put her arms round his neck. He looked up into her face. “It’s real pain over what she did. I’ll never be able to think of her, let alone speak to her, without remembering what she did.”

He said very seriously, “You’ll have to get over that.”

“Yes, but how? I wish I weren’t the sort of person who remembers forever hurtful things people have said or done. But I am. I do. I don’t like it, I know I ought to forgive and forget. If only I could. I remember unkind things people said to me when I was at school. I mean, thirty years ago, darling. The words they used are as fresh in my mind as when they first said them.”

Although he knew it already, she’d told him before, he said to her in a light, amused tone, “I shall have to be very careful what I say to you, then.”

She was vehement, intense. “You never
never
say those sort of things. You never have. It’s one of the reasons I love you and go on loving you, because you never hurt my feelings.”

Again he lifted to her his wizened, skeletal face. “Not because I’m so sexy and charming?”

“That too. Of course.” She was entirely sincere, unsmiling. “And the thing about Fiona is, it was true what she told the police, that I disliked Jeff, that I hated him, if you like. I hated him because he said those cruel things. He’s dead and he died in a horrible way, but I don’t care. I’m glad. It won’t matter how I try, I shall never forget the things he said.”

Matthew covered her hands with his. “Not even if you get thin and I get fat?” He knew now that she was trying to lose weight and he supported her, though without admonition for the past or congratulations for the present. “Not even when I’m Large and you’re Little?”

As she was trying to answer him the doorbell rang. Michelle put up her hands to her face, her eyes suddenly bright and staring. “They’ve come back. On a Sunday. They don’t care when they come, they don’t even let us know they’re coming.”

“I’ll go,” Matthew said.

He walked quite quickly these days and could stand almost upright. The bell rang again before he got there. Fiona was on the doorstep, a new, unattractive Fiona, her dirty hair in rats’ tails, her face swollen from weeping, and her eyes red. The trousers she wore were several sizes too big for her and looked like a man’s. A shirt that should have been white, tucked into the waistband, showed how thin the past week had made her.

“Come in.”

She put her face close to his and kissed him on both cheeks. It was the kind of kiss the recipient isn’t required to return. “I have to see you. I can’t be alone any longer. I’m going back to work tomorrow. I think it will kill me.”

Michelle blushed brightly when they came into the living room. She got up and took two, then three, awkward steps toward the visitor. Matthew wondered what she’d say, if she’d even refer to her contention.

Fiona stepped toward her, they met, and the bereaved woman threw her arms round Michelle, breaking into sobs. “Why haven’t you come to me? Why have you deserted me? What have I done?”

The silence was profound. Then Michelle said, in a voice Matthew had never heard before, “You know what you’ve done.”

“I don’t, I don’t. I needed you and you left me alone. I’ve no one I care about but you. What have I done? Tell me, you must tell me. I swear I don’t know.”

“You don’t know that you told those police people that Matthew and I disliked Jeff? You told them that and now they suspect us? You don’t know that?”

“No, darling, they don’t suspect us,” Matthew said firmly. Fiona had broken into fresh tears. She threw out her arms wildly, her face streaming. “Sit down, Fiona. Come on now, calm yourself. I’ll make some tea.”

“Not until Michelle says she’ll forgive me. I didn’t know what I was doing or saying. I said anything that came into my head. I’d give everything I’ve got to take it back now.”

Michelle was looking at her sadly. “The difficulty is that you can’t take things back.”

“Then say you’ll forgive me. Say it can be as if it never happened.”

“I’ve forgiven you already,” Michelle said dryly and went into the kitchen to switch on the kettle.
But I haven’t forgotten,
she thought.
Why
is it so much easier to forgive than to forget?

Violent Crimes interviewed Leonardo Norton on Sunday evening. He was very shocked that Jims, whom he thought the most discreet and laid-back of men, had given them his name. A sense of grievance sounded in his voice. “It was at least eight-thirty before I saw him, probably nearer nine. I’d spent the day with my mother in Cheltenham.” This rang in his own ears as the most innocent and blameless of ways to spend a day. “I really can’t account for what Mr. Melcombe-Smith may have been doing in the afternoon.”

They didn’t ask him where Jims had spent the night. Presumably, they hadn’t much interest in what happened after 4:30 P.M.

The next question was rather near the bone. “Did he have a key to this house?”

“To my house? Certainly not.” Jims, after all, would never admit to such a thing.

“But the lady next door has?”

“Amber Conway? Yes, she does. As I have a key to hers. It seemed wise. I understand Mr. Melcombe-Smith borrowed her key.”

According to her sister, whom they tracked down, Amber Conway had gone to Ireland but not until Saturday. She had been at home on Friday night but the sister knew nothing about a key. Violent Crimes told Leonardo they’d come back. Leonardo phoned Jims at home. When the receiver was lifted he could hear a child screaming, another one laughing, and something that sounded like a Disney video bleating and crooning from the television.

“You
are
a one,” said Leonardo when he heard Jims’s morose tones. “Quite a little devil when you like. Did you really stick a knife in your wife’s husband’s guts?”

“Of course I fucking didn’t.”

“You’ll be taking bribes in brown envelopes next.”

“I don’t allow even you to say that.”

Leonardo laughed. “Want to come over?”

Jims told him coldly that he didn’t think so. He’d had a grilling that had lasted most of the day and he was tired. Besides, he’d have a fresh confrontation next morning.

“Nothing to worry about,” said Leonardo. “The papers will only say a Westminster man has been helping them with their inquiries. Or maybe ‘a well-known Tory MP.’ ”

“Leave it out, would you?” said Jims.

Chapter 23

ON THE OPPOSITE side of Glebe Terrace to Amber Conway and Leonardo Norton lived a woman Natalie Reckman had got to know. She was the sister of her boyfriend’s flatmate’s girlfriend, a rather distantly removed relationship but one whose branchings were instantly simplified by most of the parties meeting for a dinner arranged and cooked by the flatmate. His sister-in-law-to-be told the company how the peace of her street had been disturbed all day by the comings and goings of the police, some in uniform and some, she was sure, plainclothed. Their quarry appeared to be the woman opposite or it might instead be this woman’s neighbor, a young banker or stockbroker or something whom she’d always supposed perfectly law-abiding. Someone had told her that a frequent visitor to his house—and she’d seen him call there herself— was that MP whose wife was a bigamist. She recognized him when she saw his picture in the paper.

Natalie was so excited she could barely eat her dinner. Unfortunately, she had to eat it and she was going to have to stay the night there too or put her relationship with her boyfriend in jeopardy. He’d already complained she was always away and thought more of getting a scoop than of him. Anyway, there wasn’t much that could be done before the morning. But by nine next day she was in Glebe Terrace, her car in the underground car park to avoid all risk of towing away or clamping, and Natalie was ringing the bell on a pretty little house which was the right-hand half of a joined-up pair. No police were about. Just as it began to look as if Amber Conway was still away and Natalie had rung the bell three times, the door was opened by a half-asleep woman with tousled hair and sleep dust in her eyes, wearing a short dressing gown over baby doll pajamas.

“Amber Conway?”

“Yes. Who are you? I only got home at three this morning. Are you the police?”

“Certainly not,” said Natalie. “What an idea.”

“They’ve been phoning me. I told them not to get here till ten.”

“That’s why I got here at nine.” Natalie put one foot over the threshold. “Can I come in?”

Jims had spent the evening lecturing Zillah on what he called her “disgusting and criminal behavior.” If he was to continue to share his life with her it must be on the strict understanding that she did what she was told, starting with a marriage ceremony, quietly carried out this time at a hotel or some such place, anywhere licensed for weddings. After that it would be more sensible for her to live permanently at Fredington Crucis House, only coming to London when her presence was required at some Conservative function, say a party hosted by the leader of the Opposition. Eugenie must go to boarding school and Jordan follow her in three years’ time. Meanwhile he would attend a nursery school of Jims’s choosing.

“I won’t,” Zillah said. “I’ve only just left the bloody place and I’m not going back.”

“I’m afraid you must, my dear. If you don’t I shall have no option but to leave you, or rather, turn you out. Because if we aren’t married and haven’t even lived together for more than two months, I shall be under no legal obligation to support you. Jerry can’t, if he ever did to any extent. He’s dead. So you either toe the line or go on the benefit. I don’t know where you’ll live but I dare say Westminster would put you in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.”

“What a bastard you are.”

“Calling names won’t help. Thanks to some crafty string-pulling, I’ve arranged for us to be married on Wednesday. All right with you?”

That had been Monday. Neither of them had much sleep that night. Even though he hadn’t revealed his state of mind to Zillah, Jims was seriously worried about the police investigation. One never knew when they would pounce again, for pounce he was sure they would. The chief whip had as yet said nothing to him and neither had the leader of the Opposition, but from each he fancied he’d received chilly looks. The idea that they were biding their time was inescapable.

Zillah, too, lay awake but, oddly enough, her state of mind was far more cheerful and forward-looking than his. That afternoon, before he came home, she’d had a phone call from a television channel called Moon and Stars asking her if she’d be willing to go on their
A Bite of Breakfast
show and talk about her experiences. She’d said she’d think about it and get back to them on Tuesday. If she played her cards right, she could maybe have a career in television. It might be wisest to get married first, just to be on the safe side. She’d ring Moon and Stars in the morning and ask them to wait just one more day, when she’d be able to give them a positive answer.

Jims worried also about the newspapers. That remark of Leonardo’s about describing the man who’d been “helping the police with their inquiries” as a well-known Tory MP still rankled. He was pretty sure they couldn’t do that, they wouldn’t dare, it would be
sub judice
or whatever the term was, and once again he wished he had some legal training. Probably there would be nothing anyone could link with him—but when would they come back for him? Could he find the courage to make an appointment with the chief whip before the tiresome man sent for him? Once he’d have said his nerve was limitless, but now he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t understand why he’d had no invitations from the
Today
program or Jeremy Paxman’s
Start the Week.
They came fast enough when he had nothing to say.

The newspapers flopped onto the mat at six-thirty in the morning. Jims had only slept for about an hour. He was up drinking coffee. If he grabbed the papers with unseemly haste, there was no one to see him. He sighed with relief for there was nothing more about him than the usual “man helping.” So far, so good. A pity, really, that there was no point in going back to bed at this hour. He could have slept at last.

The manager—he called himself the chief executive—of the Merry Cookhouse on the A30 remembered Jims, identifying him from a photograph without any trouble. He had been the rudest and most difficult customer the man behind the counter had come across for some time. When he’d finished insulting the décor and the service, he’d said the food wasn’t fit for pigs, it was a suppurating sore on the fair face of England, and the staff were morons who couldn’t tell a chicken breast from a pig’s balls.

That had been at three o’clock on the Friday afternoon. Violent Crimes reasoned, rather to their disappointment, that with the state of the traffic, Jims couldn’t possibly have got from this point in Hampshire to Marble Arch in under two hours, more likely three. They didn’t bother to tell him so. Why not let him sweat for a bit? He was obviously guilty of something, if not murder. Once they’d got the evidence of the Merry Cookhouse man, they didn’t take the trouble to call on Amber Conway, though they might have done so if they’d known Natalie Reckman had forestalled them.

“This MP chap, he was a mate of Leonardo Norton, was he?” Natalie was asking this question at the very moment Violent Crimes’s visit was due. “What you’d call a close friend?”

“More than that,” said Amber. “You won’t mention my name, will you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I suppose I’m naive, but I thought for a long time it was politics. We’re all very political in Westminster, you know.”

Natalie switched off the recording device Amber hadn’t noticed she was using. “Often borrowed your key, did he?”

“I’ve never known him do it before. He had a key of his own.” Back at home, Natalie found a message waiting for her on her answering machine. It was from Zillah Melcombe-Smith and for a start it sang, rather well and in tune: “
I’m getting married in the morning.
” This was followed by spoken words: “Sorry if I wasn’t very nice to you last time. I was under a lot of pressure. Once I’m legally married to that sod I’ll have a story for you. Would you like to come round on Wednesday afternoon, say about three?”

Natalie put everything on hold. The inquest having taken place and been adjourned, Jeff was getting himself cremated that afternoon at Golders Green. She might as well go. After all, she’d been attached to him for longer than most of his other women and though she’d finally thrown him out, their parting had been as amicable as possible in the circumstances, and her fondness for him had endured until his death. That was probably because she’d never been under any illusions about him.

At two o’clock she dressed herself in a black skirt and jacket. Some precept lingering from years ago when she’d lived at home with her mother made the idea of a trouser suit worn to a funeral seem indecent. Natalie didn’t like hats and only had one, an unbleached straw with a big brim she’d bought for a holiday in Egypt. It wouldn’t do, so she went bareheaded. So did Zillah Melcombe-Smith, whom she hadn’t expected to see. She smiled at her across the chapel, and waved in a discreet and funereal way, suitably subdued to be appropriate for the occasion. Zillah had a child with her, the little boy who was always crying and was Jeff Leach’s son. No doubt, there was no one around for her to leave him with. The voluntary set him off and he was screaming at the top of his lungs by the time the coffin was carried in.

The weeping woman in deepest unrelieved black must be the current girlfriend, or rather, the most recent past girlfriend. Fiona Something. Blond, as usual, with the exception of the one he’d married. She cried all through the perfunctory service. The fat woman who’d come with her put an arm round her shoulders, then pressed her to the biggest bust— you couldn’t call it “breasts”—Natalie had ever seen. That man who’d made such a success of a TV program about anorexia was with them, singing hymns in rather a good baritone. Natalie hadn’t sent any flowers. She’d been feeling guilty about that, but now felt worse, there were so few wreaths. Those there were lay on a paved courtyard outside the crematorium, gerberas and lilies and ranunculus mostly, and Natalie thought how flowers sold in Britain had changed in the past ten years. Before that, it would have been all roses and carnations. A card on the biggest sheaf read:
In adored memory of my darling Jeff, Your Fiona.
Next to it was a wreath of white dianthus, tightly packed, that looked uncannily like a large Polo mint. The
In loving memory
card said,
From Dad and Beryl.
Nothing from the widow. No other former girlfriends there.