Incarnate (15 page)

“She won’t. She’s never any trouble. All she wants is to rest in the warm. You don’t begrudge her that, do you? You may be like her one day yourself. Just let her rest and know you’re here if she needs you.” She looked squarely at him. “It isn’t as if you were going anywhere.”

When he didn’t answer, she tied on her headscarf and zipped up her long quilted coat, then impulsively she kissed him. “Dear old Geoffrey, I can always count on you.”

He watched her until she vanished downhill. The slow deep breathing upstairs seemed to permeate the house. At least that ought to mean he would be undisturbed. He went up, treading lightly in case the stairs creaked, and felt foolish. He paused outside his office to listen to the long, slow breaths, and then a kind of fascination he hadn’t felt since early adolescence made him creep along the landing and peer around the ajar door.

The window and the mirror opposite streamed with white. The bald head was so deep in the pillow that the linen bulges on either side were higher than the nose and chin. He couldn’t imagine what the face had looked like when it was younger, even in middle age, for the features seemed lost in porous dough. His fascination urged him forward, the hinges gave a faint squeal as he edged the door open, and then he flinched back, closing his eyes. He didn’t open them until he was in his office with the door shut tight behind him. It wasn’t that the bald head had risen as the hinges squealed, it wasn’t the sight of her white face turning toward the door as if she could see through her closed eyelids; it was that as he had retreated and the head sank back, still breathing regularly, the face had seemed to flatten as if it had no bones to hold it up.

Of course he couldn’t have seen anything of the kind. Briskly he unlocked the safe and took out the sheets of yesterday’s issue that he had collected from the post office before Mr. Rowley was due. All at once a thought made him smile: for now he could deal with Hay by ignoring him and, more important, as long as Geoffrey was at home. Hay couldn’t get to Joyce. He took Hay’s letter from the jacket he had meant to wear and locked it away. Snow flurried over Muswell Hill, and Geoffrey was glad not to be driving. As he turned over the first sheet of stamps to search for imperfections, he felt so calm he thought if that breathing slowed any more it would put him to sleep.

14

A
S SOON
as Molly gave the desk sergeant her name, Inspector Maitland stepped forward. His face looked younger than he’d sounded on the phone, though above his protruding ears his fluffy hair was graying. “You’re the lady who wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he said with a droll smile that pushed his lower lip out, and turned to Martin. “And you must be the victim of the press.”

Martin forced a smile. “You could say that.”

Maitland gave them chairs in his office and walked to his desk with an easy gait that looked like the product of physical training. Close up he smelled of mints. “Well now,” he said as he crossed his legs and leaned his chair back, “tell me what you’re looking for.”

“I usually don’t know until I see it,” Martin said.

“A tour of a typical London police station, eh?”

“Maybe.”

“A cautious talker, isn’t he?” The inspector swiveled his chair to face Molly. “I suppose one learns to be careful with the American police. Never know when they might pull out a gun to settle the argument.” He pivoted back to Martin. “We aren’t like that here, my friend. We just try to do one of the more difficult jobs in the world the best way we know how. Those who can’t don’t stay. What can I show you?”

“I was wondering if we could see behind the scenes,” Martin said.

“Of course you can. We’ve nothing to hide.” He was leaning back again, enjoying his balance. “Just tell me one thing,” he said carelessly. “Why did you choose this particular division?”

“I told you on the phone,” Molly intervened. “We want—”

“I know what you said, but I want to hear from the man in charge.”

“We looked on the map and found you were closest to MTV.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wallace. Just what Miss Wolfe told me.” Now his smile was meant for himself. “So what might there be behind the scenes that you think you ought to see ?”

“Maybe the cells.”

“The dramatic approach, eh? Well, why not. They’re empty just now, but let’s visit them by all means. Perhaps we can arrange for them to be in use when you come to film. We can always lock up a drunk or two, it’s just that we don’t always bother.” His smile was fading. “I’m sure you know that it’s only the untypical that’s news. Unfortunately that means it’s the least typical incidents that everyone hears about.”

“You mean Lenny Bennett,” said Martin.

“I do indeed.” His smile looked sad, as if he’d expected that. “But I don’t mean only him. I mean a child of just about my little daughter’s age who was raped so hard by three young blacks not a mile from here that she may never walk again and can’t eat for thinking of what they made her swallow. That isn’t typical either, but it’s what we have to deal with.”

“Do you think it would have been less of an ordeal for her,” Molly said before she could stop herself, “if her attackers had been white?”

“Dear me, I must watch my language if I’m to be scrutinized that closely.” He was holding the door open for them. “No. I don’t suppose it would have done her any good if they’d been white, but they weren’t, were they?” He collected a bunch of keys from the desk and went to a heavy door at the end of the corridor. “Maybe you should realize that we don’t lock up many blacks, and those we do aren’t here for very long.”

Beyond the door a few steps led down to a short corridor across which two pairs of cells faced each other. Walls and cell doors were pale green, and Molly couldn’t think why that should make her nervous. Martin was silent. Who wouldn’t be preoccupied, she thought. The jiffy bag with the film of Lenny Bennett’s death was addressed to him. He was involved. And even if the film turned out to be fake, he couldn’t walk away from it now. “Why is that?” she said to Maitland, since Martin remained quiet.

“Now, why do you suppose? You must know that we can hardly stop a black in the street without some bush lawyer complaining of harassment. That’s why the stories about Bennett are so patently ridiculous, even though he had been such a naughty boy.”

Martin spoke without warning. “Which cell did he die in?”

“He didn’t die in a cell at all. I wonder who told you he did.” The inspector had selected a key and was stroking it with his fingertips. “He died in hospital. He ran out of here when we brought him in for questioning, straight in front of a car. I can give you my word that is what happened, even though I wasn’t there. He couldn’t have done that if we had been treating him rough, now could he? I’m not telling you anything that wasn’t in the papers. You could have read about it in the
Telegraph
instead of listening to propaganda.”

“You brought him in for questioning at three in the morning?” Molly said.

“Certainly, since that was when we found him. He wasn’t very anxious to be found, you know. Hardly surprising, since he was concealing explosives in his flat. Which, I may say, we didn’t discover until after his death, so you see we had even less reason to lose our tempers with him.”

Perhaps he was telling the truth. Perhaps the film was a fake—could a film really have been shot here unnoticed? “But you did put him in a cell,” she said.

“That’s so. This one.” He was unlocking it. “I admit that was an unfortunate mistake, very unfortunate. The driver and his passenger brought him in off the road before they could be stopped, and the officer who dealt with it wasn’t as experienced as he might have been. This was the only place he could think of for Bennett to lie down. Of course Bennett should never have been moved at all.” He stood aside from the open door. “Go ahead, look around. Take your time ”

Martin went in first, and Molly glanced around the pale green corridor. A peephole glinted bulbously at her from the door opposite. The film was replaying itself in her mind: the door of Lenny Bennett’s cell looked warped by the peephole through which the camera was spying, the warped door kept opening on glimpses of Bennett—or someone who looked very like him when he took his hands away from his smashed face to scream for help. The film jerked from shot to shot of the door as it opened to admit policemen whose faces one never quite saw, and beyond them one glimpsed Bennett, spitting out a tooth in one shot, lying on the cell floor in the last shot, unable to raise himself to protect his face with his broken fingers as a boot went in… . The film was barely four minutes long; half of it consisted of shots of the closed door. There was no sound, and nothing else to see except the beginnings of a graffito on the wall above the bunk,
“LE”
in large broad strokes that might have been scraped with the heel of a shoe. She glanced toward Martin, who had turned away from the bunk that was the only furniture except for the seatless lavatory, and saw that the wall was unmarked. She went in then, surprised to find how much she had been dreading the sight of those two letters on the wall. “Yes, do go in,” Inspector Maitland said.

Now that she was closer to Martin she noticed that his hands were trembling slightly. “Did you get the name of the driver who ran into him?” Martin said.

“We should have, for speeding. But no, I’m afraid we let him get away.” Maitland moved into the doorway, which was little wider than his shoulders. “Just goes to show how concerned we were about Bennett.”

He was making the cell feel smaller. The pale green glare of the wall made her anxious to get out of the cell. She started to turn away from the bunk and then saw what Martin’s shadow had obscured, what he had already seen, why his hands were trembling. The light picked out the faintest trace beneath the new paint of the first two letters of Lenny Bennett’s name.

Maitland blocked the doorway, smiling peacefully. All at once, with a vividness that made her throat feel stuffed with paper, she saw the first shot in which the door of Lenny Bennett’s cell was open, a shot of a policeman whose shoulders almost filled the doorway as he went in. She stepped forward quickly, willing Martin to follow, but the policeman didn’t budge. “Perhaps you ought to stay in here,” he said, “while you decide what to film.”

Molly closed her eyes: the green seemed to be advancing like fog. “I’d like to go up now,” she said. “I don’t feel very well.”

“Claustrophobic?” The inspector’s tone was sympathetic, but she heard his smile. “Then you really shouldn’t have come down here.”

His voice hadn’t moved, he was still blocking the doorway. Martin took her arm. “I guess you want to stand aside,” he said.

She made herself open her eyes. Maitland was stepping back, looking amused. “You mustn’t take me too seriously. You ought to know that we don’t lock up people in your line of work unless they’ve been very irresponsible.” As he locked the door at the top of the steps he said, “Would you care for a drink. Miss Wolfe? Just a cup of tea, I’m afraid.”

“No thank you.” She swallowed painfully. “I need fresh air.”

He looked disappointed. “You’ll let me know when you intend to come back.”

“You’ll be hearing from us,” Martin said.

The wintry air outside went through her like a shudder, and at first she thought she would be sick. Cars spattered the pavements of Bayswater Road with gray slush beneath the ominously luminous sky. When Martin wiped a dripping bench dry in Hyde Park she realized that he needed to sit down as much as she did. She could see Lenny Bennett’s mother, a thin middle-aged woman, gazing at the film as if she couldn’t close her eyes, sobbing, “Oh, Lenny, they did it, oh, sweet Jesus,” over and over as tears streamed down the lines in her face. Molly huddled close to Martin on the bench. “It was him, wasn’t it?” she said.

“In the film? Sure. He was the first one into the cell, he must have been in there all the time. Christ, I don’t know how I managed not to knock him down.” He was clenching his fist. “Okay, I’ll give the film to your news people and they can interview me saying I’m convinced it’s real. Who do I give it to?”

“Ben Eccles.”

“But isn’t he the guy who—”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s over. It’s his program, and he’s good at his job.”

“I guess it must be true if you say so. Do you mind if we get back right away?” He was hugging her and staring at the trees that were trickling snow. “You see, the thing is, Molly, I would have told you sooner except for all this about Lenny Bennett, but I need to go home.”

“You mean home home.”

“Right, North Carolina. I have to fly out tomorrow morning, that’s the earliest they could give me.”

They’d only made love a couple of times, she thought, she had no right to expect him to let her know what he was doing. She could see how troubled he was; he had been concealing it until they’d finished their investigation. “It’s your father,” she said.

“Right.” His fist was open now; his hand looked helpless. “My mother called last night. He had a heart attack a few days ago but he won’t stay in bed or stop drinking. That’s my father,” he said and looked as though he wished he felt entitled to think affectionately of him. “She says he mentioned me. I don’t know what he said or even if he really said anything, but I have to go back, don’t I? I ought to take the chance.”

“Of course you must.” She kissed him and stood up. “Come on, let’s get the film out of the way.”

She couldn’t watch it again. She turned away amid the faint oppressive hum of the Moviola while he did. “Introduce me and I’ll do the rest,” he said as they went down to Eccles.

He was in his office with his new and proudly lesbian assistant, Laura Box. The pubic calendar still hung, an emblem of lecherous defiance, behind his desk. “What can I do for you?” he said to Molly, with an emphasis on the last word that felt like the grinding of a heel.

Eventually Ben accompanied them grudgingly to the seventh floor. He watched the film, watched it again while Martin told him about Maitland and the writing on the wall, watched a third time while he heard about Lenny Bennett’s mother. He looked suspicious when he learned that Molly had been at the police station. “I may want to use it, I don’t know yet,” he said at last. “I’ll want to do some checking. At any rate, we can record what you’ve told me in case you aren’t here.”