CHAPTER
35
S
HE MARCHED ALONG,
hands jammed in her coat pockets, feeling oddly calm about her first ever dawn raid. It was just after eight o’clock, but since she had been awake since half past two this did not register with her as early for visitors. Indeed she considered she was being generous in waiting until morning. When she had finally worked out the truth, at around four o’clock, there had been mixed with her self-congratulation a certain delight in solving the matter for Andrew, and she had nearly telephoned him there and then. But, she had thought, with the receiver in her hand, he would probably be maddeningly calm about it. He would ask her for evidence or—what was that awful phrase of his?—‘reason to suspect’. Much better if she saw it through herself and presented Andrew with the whole thing cut and dried with a full confession, because it was a certainty that, once confronted, there could be no denials.
She smiled. After enduring a night with the sky bursting inexplicably with showers of exploding chrysanthemums and filled with loud alarming bangs, Herve would probably be quivering indoors now, thinking the revolution had come, as unaware of this annual pyrotechnic madness as he had been of the end of British Summer Time. He would probably think she was doing him a favour, coming to explain that the end of civilisation was not as nigh as he might fear.
Not up yet, Sara noted without surprise, pressing the outside buzzer and looking up at the closed drapes of 11 Camden Crescent. The curtain moved as she waited. So he had been easy to wake. But no reply came. She buzzed again and waited, still looking up. This time the curtain was still. She pushed on the buzzer again and kept her finger there. After a very long time a slow, groggy voice rasped quietly through the intercom. ‘What? Who is that?’ He was pretending that he had been asleep.
‘Herve, is that you? It’s Sara. Let me in. Sorry if I woke you, but it’s very important.’
‘Sara? I don’t . . . what is important? Now is not so good.’
‘You’ll understand. It won’t take long.’
‘No. Not now. Now is not good time.’
‘Herve? It’s important. Please let me in for a minute.’ There was a long pause filled only by the faint whistle of the intercom.
‘
Herve?
Look, it’s freezing out here. Will you please let me in for a minute? It
is
important. Let me in, Herve.’ There was another long pause and then with a click the door lock was released.
Herve opened the door of the flat dressed only in a short towelling robe.
‘Hello, Herve. Sorry to appear unannounced.’ Sara felt a stab of retaliatory glee for the occasion when he had burst in on her and Andrew. She marched past him into the drawing room. He had not asked her in, but he would not want to stand out at the door dressed only in that. She turned. ‘I am sorry. You look as if you were about to have a bath.’ He looked in need of one too, she couldn’t help noticing. His long hair looked mussed up and then pasted down, his skin had the faint sweaty shine that is produced by overheated rooms in winter. The room was not only warm, but seemed to have been sucked empty of breathable air. He did not invite her to sit down.
‘Herve, this is important. Look, I know what you’ve been doing.’
‘Doing? I? Of course you know what I am doing. We are doing together, new piece for keyboard, cello and recorded tape. And you say you have important thing to say. This is not good time, Sara, really.’ Herve had arched his eyebrows defensively and was already making for the door to show her out.
‘But I do have important things to say! You’re a plagiarist. Fooling around with other people’s work. Pretending to write music when all you’ve done is copy someone else’s stuff!’
‘Plagiarism?’
‘It’s so dishonest! I mean, just writing something backwards, calling it your
own
music when you don’t care what it actually sounds like, it just means you’ve written something down . . . you can’t call that composing. I don’t see how you can call it music. It’s shameful. Isn’t it?’
Herve gave a shrug and folded his arms. ‘True music is about process. It is the idea that is all. The material is not important, it is the composer’s mind that supplies the musical landscape, his idea. It is the idea of the music that matters.’
‘Oh, no matter what it sounds like?’ Sara challenged, then collected herself. Wishing more than anything in the world that she had not gone into this alone she said, slightly hesitantly, ‘Look, this isn’t the point and you know it. It’s what else you did. When you went to the workshop. You turned on the gas to make sure Adele wouldn’t give you away. You killed her, didn’t you? You know what you’ve done . . . You know . . .’ Suddenly the truth, or perhaps the heat of the room, her lack of sleep or the events of last night, possibly all of them, were going to make her faint, or be sick . . .
Herve moved impatiently, shifting his weight on to the other hip. He glanced over Sara’s shoulder, then back to her. Gulping hard, Sara looked swiftly behind her at the door that led to the bedroom and its attached bathroom. ‘I need to use your bathroom. I need to . . . Sorry, but . . .’
But Herve was blocking her way. ‘No, you cannot,’ he said quickly, and openly annoyed. ‘But this is not the time. You may not go there. You go
now.
’ He was steering her towards the door of the flat.
Sara made her way to an armchair and sat on the edge of it. ‘Wait. I feel dizzy. I’ll go in a second,’ she said. She took a few deep breaths. ‘I know what you’ve done. I’m getting the police. You killed Adele. You know you did.’
Two things then happened, and Sara was not sure in which order. A loud, explosive sound burst from Herve’s nose and mouth, a combination of a derisive snort, a laugh and a ‘Haa!’. The door to the bedroom opened and a woman appeared, newly woken, wearing one of Herve’s shirts with only one button fastened. She was opening and closing lips that looked as if they had been rubbed with sandpaper, and her hair looked like an exploding firework. Sara drew in her breath.
‘Hello, Valerie,’ she said.
CHAPTER
36
S
ARA MADE HER
way shakily back to her car, trying to expunge the picture of Valerie in the doorway of Herve’s bedroom. Yet she had to hand it to the woman. Even half asleep and half naked, Valerie had been almost dignified. Once she had woken up sufficiently to realise who she was looking at, she had gone on staring for several seconds, then looked at Herve.
‘What’s all this?’
‘Sara is making another little scene of hysterics.’
‘Valerie, get dressed. You’ve got to come with me. Valerie, I’ll explain—’
‘Sara thinks I am murderer.’
Valerie had then raised her head, taken a deep breath and stared again with hostility at Sara. ‘Oh, please. How utterly typical. I suppose Andrew’s in on this?’
‘I tell you, Sara, I think at last you are out of mind totally.’
‘Valerie, I know it looks odd, but—’
‘You’ve got a nerve, haven’t you? I’m going nowhere with you. Now just get out, will you?’ Then, as if having considered what else she might say and concluding that after all, no, there were no more words appropriate to the occasion or at least none at her command, Valerie had simply turned and walked back into the bedroom, closing the door.
Driving out of Bath back to St Catherine’s Valley Sara felt at least two emotions, even two judgments at once, which collided badly and yet coexisted in her now fairly jiggered head. For hadn’t Valerie and Herve looked a bit stupid and tawdry? But then, perhaps other people’s adultery always seems so, while one’s own is always perfectly understandable, inevitable even, and of a purer, rarefied kind. Was she so certain that it must be flabby, middle-aged lust that drew Valerie and Herve together, whereas she and Andrew were in love as well as in better shape? She could not predict how Andrew would feel about it, beyond realising that he could not, any more than she could, take the moral high ground. Neither of them was in any position to judge Valerie at all, having so happily and only yesterday done exactly as she had. Should she not even acknowledge a glimmering of gratitude towards her, for Valerie’s perfidy surely excused Andrew’s and hers? She tried to tell herself that the questions that now arose concerning Valerie and Herve, never mind Andrew and herself, would all have to wait, because Herve was a murderer. Yet, of course, it was not going to be that simple, for how could she now contact Andrew to tell him that, without going into the other? Andrew might even go straight round to arrest him. What should she say then?
Oh, and I should just mention, Andrew, your wife’s also there, wearing a silly grin and the murderer’s pyjama jacket?
She felt angry with Valerie, not liking to think of Andrew as a cuckold and at the same time not wanting him to care. She wanted him too besotted with herself to get territorial about Valerie, but however he might feel about it, the matter of Andrew’s reaction begged the question: how was she going to tell him?
Was
she going to tell him? In any event she had to get home first.
Andrew had solved the last of Sara’s problems by having his mobile phone switched off. Sara sank, almost grateful for his unavailability, on to the sofa in the drawing room. All she could do was wait a few minutes and keep trying; for the moment her head was swimming too much and her thinking too ragged to do much else. She was exhausted enough for sleep. But when her second try at Andrew’s number was interrupted by loud knocking at the door she found she still had enough energy to swear.
‘Well, I’m glad I followed my instinct to come out to see you,’ Poppy said, stepping past Sara into the drawing room. ‘I was so worried about you last night. You still don’t look good. Sleep badly?’
Sara nodded. ‘Actually, Poppy, I’ve got a few things I must do. Then I really must have a rest. It’s very kind of you, but—’
‘Oh, I don’t mind! Acupuncture’ll do you a lot more good than a rest. It’s after nine, anyway. You can’t go back to bed. I’ve brought everything with me.’
‘Poppy, I . . .’ Sara raised a hand to her head and had to sit down again. ‘I really don’t think—’
‘Oh, you’ll see the light about acupuncture,’ Poppy said warmly, placing a friendly hand on Sara’s arm. ‘I think sometimes it takes a thing like last night to let us know we need help. Sometimes, something just gives way. Hypertension’s just extreme tension after all, isn’t it? I must say you do look tired.’
‘No, well, I have a lot on my mind.’ Sara smiled wanly, trying not to let her impatience show. ‘Look, I have to make a phone call.’
‘No, fine, you carry on,’ Poppy said gaily. ‘I can wait. I’ll just set up next door. This way, is it?’
‘Poppy . . .’ Sara began. But Poppy had gone. She tried Andrew again. The mobile was still switched off. She tried Manvers Street Police Station and was told Chief Inspector Poole was not yet in. Nervously, she dialled his home number and got no reply. Andrew, maddeningly, was still unavailable and also was failing to provide her with an excuse to get rid of Poppy. From the music room Poppy’s cheery voice was calling, ‘Ooh, what a super room! Nearly ready!’ Sara sighed. All she could do was to keep trying, and in the meantime, perhaps she really didn’t want to be alone. Acupuncture might even help, and it certainly couldn’t hurt.
‘H
E HAD
your name and phone number on a scrap of paper in his breast pocket. Lucky, that,’ said the Welsh duty physician over the top of his glasses. His good humour had a half-hysterical edge, like a lunatic’s. ‘You and your wife’s. Only we’d have been contacting you lot anyway, for a case like this.’
‘I’m not on duty,’ Andrew growled. ‘If I were, I would have pinned you down long before this.’ It was just after nine o’clock in the morning and he had been waiting to see the doctor, with the patience required of a private citizen, since a quarter past seven.
Dr Hugh nodded towards the mound in the bed, attached to drips and respirator. ‘Thing is to keep his fluids going,’ he said with the hilarity of the seriously sleep-deprived, ‘though he’s not out of the woods, of course.’ He turned back to Andrew. ‘Why do they want to do it to themselves, that’s what I want to know.’
‘Definitely drugs, then?’
‘Oh, he’s a user, no doubt of it. Blood samples not back yet, of course. They’ll confirm it, though. Got a drink in him too, I expect. Thought we’d got an ecstasy overdose first off. Student in a coma after a party, first thing you think of, but the scan didn’t look that way. No brain swelling. Well, he might not still be with us if there was.’ The doctor gestured ruefully towards the bed.
‘So how do you know he’s a user? Did friends come with him, tell you what he’d been taking?’ Andrew had not been able to talk to the paramedics directly. But the reception staff had been able to tell him that an ambulance had been called to the hall of residence, where a fire crew was already in attendance. They’d gone expecting firework injuries, but it had been a false alarm of a kind. Some students, at around three in the morning, had been larking about with fireworks in one of the corridors and had set off the fire alarm which automatically triggered the call-out. There was of course no fire, nor any burn injuries. But Phil, missing from the roll call, had been found comatose in his bed.
‘No, he was brought in on his own. But he’s been injecting. Not very good at it, actually. New to it, I suppose. Have a look.’
Andrew looked at the tiny raised pinpricks on Phil’s arms.
‘You think he injected his own shoulder blades, do you?’
On the other side of the bed Dr Hugh said complacently, ‘Funny that, isn’t it? Can’t say I have worked that one out. Full of surprises, my job.’
‘Yes, half the fun, I’m sure. These are acupuncture marks,’ said Andrew with weary patience.
‘
Oh!
So that’s what they are, is it?’ Dr Hugh exclaimed, with the glee of the newly initiated. ‘I never knew that. Don’t come across it, you see. But look here.’ He drew up the sheet and cotton blanket from the bottom of the bed, exposing the feet. ‘Here. On his left ankle.’ Andrew came round to look. The puncture mark was bigger and had been made into the vein. ‘That one’s not acupuncture now, is it? Made with a syringe, that one. Must have been injecting something.’
‘You said he wasn’t very good at it,’ Andrew said, after a pause. Dr Hugh looked puzzled. ‘Suppose he injected some air? Would that account for the state he’s in?’
Dr Hugh gave Andrew a look which told him he couldn’t fool him. ‘Well now, he’d hardly do that now, would he?’
‘By accident, I mean,’ Andrew said wearily.
‘Oh, well, you tell me. Depends how much. Less than a fatal amount; well, it would depend.’
Andrew tried another tack. ‘Assuming he survives,’ he said, looking back at the bed, ‘and he might not, I understand that, but assuming he does, what’s the outlook?’
‘Oh, can’t say. It’s wait and see time, isn’t it? Might just wake up with a headache. Might be damage, though, affecting any number of things.’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘Depression, epilepsy, loss of speech, use of limbs, eye coordination. Or PVS. That’s persistent vegetative state, for the layman.’ Dr Hugh smiled and seemed physically to swell with the power to enlighten.
Andrew shuddered at the thought that this man could be in charge of a scalpel.
Dr Hugh nodded again at the mound, remembering something he’d heard on a course once about connecting with patients at a human level. ‘He’s Chinese, is he? I’m from Swansea, myself.’
‘I’
M READY
for you no-ow!’ called Poppy. Sara shambled through to the music room, too tired to resist. Perhaps afterwards she would sleep better. Poppy’s good hands had certainly helped Andrew, she recalled.
‘I don’t feel I’ve had the chance to get to know you properly. I like to get to know people if they’re doing anything like this to me,’ Sara said mildly, once she was lying comfortably on her back on Poppy’s folded-out table. ‘It’s all right if I chatter, isn’t it? Won’t disturb your concentration?’
‘Oh, no,’ Poppy said. ‘Trust’s very important. You just relax and chat away. Whatever helps.’ Expertly, she was checking that Sara’s loose trousers and shirt would allow access to the necessary acupuncture points. ‘I’ll be working here and here first. Then here, and then up here. Last ones down here. All right? You just relax and let me do the work.’ She arranged a light blanket over Sara’s lower body.
‘You’re amazingly skilled,’ Sara said. ‘Multi-talented. I can’t believe you know all about this
and
you do stage management as well. Not to mention all the night duty at the care home. Cosmo’s jolly lucky. I hope he knows it.’
‘Hmm-hmm,’ Poppy murmured, as if it were all rather boring. ‘Look, you’re still jolly tense. I think I’ll start with a short cranial massage, just to get you relaxed. Okay?’
‘Did I tell you I saw your
Magic Flute
? You did stage effects for that production, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right. Of course I wasn’t there for the run. We were in Bath by then. I just helped get the production ready.’ She reached into Sara’s long hair and began to knead her scalp. Sara groaned at the delicious tingle that suddenly burst through her body and wondered if her fingertips were going numb.
‘You just upped sticks then, and came with Cosmo? That was selfless. You do such a lot for him, Poppy.’ Unable to see her, Sara could nevertheless sense Poppy’s smile. The kneading continued, spreading out around the back of her skull. Sara’s eyes grew heavy.
‘I like to. He needs me.’ Poppy’s voice was so soft as to be nearly inaudible. ‘He’s in a very tough business.’
‘I’ll say.’ Sara sighed quietly. ‘Very tough.’
There was silence as both women brooded privately about just how tough.
‘Really cutthroat, at times. So many jealousies,’ Sara murmured, almost asleep. It was wafting in and out of her mind that Cosmo could not have told Poppy about her mad accusation last night. She owed him thanks for that at least, as well as an apology for getting things so wrong. Cosmo was quite a gent, after all.
‘It’s so difficult for him,’ Poppy agreed. ‘It’s so difficult just getting performed, let alone commissions. And getting reviewed. Critics can be so cruel.’
Sara opened her eyes and said suddenly, ‘Oh, I’ve just thought of something. I know someone who does a bit of reviewing. James Ballantyne—the pianist. D’you know of him? Ow!’ Poppy’s hands were gripping her head rather painfully. Sara struggled on to her elbows. ‘Look, do you? Because Cosmo really should send him some work.’
She lay back down, sensing that Poppy was a little annoyed that she had broken her concentration.
‘In fact, I’ve got a piece on him somewhere. Let me get it now, before you get started again. I’ll probably forget later.’ Sara slipped off the massage table, went over to a tidy pile of magazines and papers sitting on the floor beside the sofa and began to rummage.
‘Yes! Here it is.’ She pulled out the
New Music Review
and began to leaf through it. ‘The July issue, James told me it was in here somewhere. I haven’t even read it myself. Herve left this copy behind. He’s in it, too. Ah, yes, here we are.’
Sara, her head in the magazine, had not noticed that Poppy was looking less than enthusiastic. ‘There’s a whole profile of James. I won’t read it all: “none better qualified to judge the European New Composers Piano awards, with homes in Bath, London and Brussels”; “pre-eminent recitalist and accompanist”; “Ballantyne’s star is no less bright today than it was twenty years ago,” blah blah. And then at the foot of the page it says, “Ballantyne reviews for
NMR
page forty-two.” So, on to page forty-two—’
‘I know all about page forty-two,’ Poppy said sharply. ‘Stop it. Are you doing this on purpose? I never thought of you as unkind.’
Sara lowered the magazine in astonishment. ‘Unkind? But I’m not,’ she said. She had now found page forty-two.
‘Go on, read it,’ Poppy said bitterly. ‘It’s Marthe Francis’s Wigmore, isn’t it? I know it by heart anyway. How does it go? “The decision to include some contemporary repertoire in the second half was commendable if not understandable. Francis failed to convince that Cosmo Lamb’s mercifully short ‘Musica Spiritua Mundi’ was worth a performance. But on the basis that we should all be able to sustain an open mind for eight minutes, I listened. It took rather less than that to decide that if I were given the choice of playing lacklustre Lamb or nothing, I wouldn’t touch a piano again.” ’