Play Dead (35 page)

‘Others involved,' Harpur said.

‘Well, of course,' Steve said. He was fair-haired and thin, like his father. ‘But police can only go so far, can't they? It's always the same. There's one thing or the other. The big boys stay in the clear.'

‘No, it's not going to be like that,' Harpur said.

‘You sure?' Steve replied. The boy had developed some adult cynicism, perhaps inevitably after what had happened to this family. He and Laura went to the kitchen to make themselves a snack.

‘I'll be away, too,' Harpur said. He had the Biro in a sealed envelope wrapped in tissue, so that the shape of the pen wasn't outlined. He took the envelope from his pocket and put it on the table. ‘A present. Open when I've gone,' he said.

T
hat visit to Midhurst by the two investigative police had stoked up Emily Young's unease about her husband, and how her husband made their money. The presence of this pair, Iles and Harpur, had seemed to define for her things she didn't want defined - had, perhaps, deliberately avoided getting defined: too much information. Her job in the museum was to do with defining: say specifying the date and provenance to within a century or two of some pottery shard or coin. At this she was first rate, and renowned. But it didn't mean she'd fancy the same sort of scrutiny and precision applied to her life in general, and particularly not to the coin area: that is, how exactly Leo earned their comfy keep, and possibly - oh, God, yes, possibly - possibly disposed of those who threatened it. That thought hounded her now.

She had felt at the time that the officers knew much more than they let on. Well, of course, of course: they were police, weren't they? She couldn't work out what was the purpose of the call, and what they took away, beyond Leo's would-be-likeable, anti-grammatical chatterboxing. There had been moments when she thought she was being played with, made fun of, especially by Iles. She'd wondered whether he'd discovered, somehow, that she'd been down to the Elms house. He'd pretended to believe she might be ignorant of Elms and had offered guidance. Absurd. Mickey-taking? He'd said he couldn't be sure whether she was familiar with the undercover man's death, but it had happened on a housing estate - a ‘stymied' estate he'd dubbed it, meaning strapped for cash. But everybody in the city able to read a newspaper, listen to radio or watch local and network TV news knew about the house after so much trial coverage. Plus, it was a trial to do with the death of one of her husband's business associates. So, naturally, Iles would realize she needed absolutely no explanation of the circumstances, as if she'd just woken up from a lost decade binge.

Why would he fool about like that? Did he
want
her to recognize the mockery? Was he telling her not just that he knew she'd gone to the Elms house, but also that he could intuit or deduce the reason - obviously something centred on Leo? And what could it be about Leo but a suspicion, dread, in Emily that Leo was connected with the clever gunfire from this house? Did the connection go beyond the fact that the man murdered here had been, on the face of it, a business mate? Had Leo been implicated in the wipeout of that supposed business mate who was, in reality, a police spy?

Probably not even Iles would be able to chart the full, high-falutin', possibly mystical motive for her Elms jaunt - to rid the place of its symbolism and foul, unnerving aura by concentrating on and handling the banal bricks and mortar: builders' materials, not a doom-touched figment. But Iles would possibly guess her Elms jaunt was to inspect a murder site because her husband might have helped set up the ambush. Might have done more than help. Might have devised it.

Emily did wonder whether she was reading too much into Iles's words and tone. She hoped so. If not, it would explain why the officers had come to Midhurst. This would be about Leo, yes, but also, slyly, obtusely, about her. They'd watched her and noted the flavour of her questions. Had they placed those questions in a background that included her night sortie to Elms? Did they decide she was acutely troubled about Leo and therefore worth focusing on as a means of ultimately getting at him? Plainly, he was their target. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised at this. But the confirmation depressed her. Definition. Undesired definition. Were they in touch with Mrs Mallen? Was that where their information came from?

What she longed for was someone who could restore a portion of the happy, concocted, mental blankness about Leo and the firm that she'd enjoyed for so long. Her job required the strong light of brainpower and learning to shine on the past. Away from the museum, though, and particularly in her marriage, she hankered after soothing, protective, impenetrable shadows. Where could she get them?

Emily thought of Mrs Jaminel. She'd never met Mrs Jaminel, but she'd been mentioned now and then by the press and broadcasters during and after the trial. The mentions were only as Jaminel's wife. Emily knew nothing about her beyond this. Might she be able to say something, though - anything, however slight - but something to indicate, hint, speculate, that her husband had acted alone and from private motives; was not merely an executioner taking orders from Leo and Leo's advisers and board members?

There were no Jaminels in the telephone directory. Some people did without a landline now and relied on their mobiles. Or the number and address could be ex-directory. She'd probably been harassed by offensive calls. Emily went to the municipal library and looked out back-numbers of the local paper at the time of the Jaminel trial and conviction. One of the reports said he'd lived at Collit, a seaside suburban village just outside the city. It gave a picture of a country cottage with a distinctive, flat-roofed extension to the side, a scarlet burglar alarm box above a bedroom window, and the sea and Orville island with its squat, white-painted lighthouse visible in the distance.

Emily drove out to Collit on a shopping afternoon and along the sea front. She found the cottage easily enough.

A woman was in the front garden, crouched forward, working on a border: dumpy, almost fat, dark hair cut to shoulder length and grey-flecked. She wore heavily framed spectacles. She'd be in her late forties, Emily thought, her gardening movements slow and methodical. The garden gate on to the street carried a name plate: ‘Axbridge'.

‘Mrs Jaminel?' Emily asked.

‘Who is it?' The accent was not local, possibly West Country. She sounded guarded. She'd probably had a lot of pushy media people here with their nagging, brutal questions when Courtenay Jaminel was found guilty. Mrs Jaminel stood upright now, facing Emily, her arms down at her sides. She wore yellow gardening gloves, a trowel in her right. The attitude struck Emily as like a sentry's stance. A ‘who goes there?' stance. Mrs Jaminel had on tan trousers and a beige cardigan over what might be a man's shirt, white with green and gold thin stripes.

Emily pointed at the name. ‘Axbridge. Somerset? Are you from there originally?'

‘Who
are
you?' Mrs Jaminel replied.

‘I'm Emily Young.'

‘
Mrs
Young?'

‘Yes, Leo Young's wife.'

‘Oh, I see. Well, you'd better come in, Mrs Young.'

It wasn't the reply she wished for. She would have preferred bafflement when she gave her name and Leo's, or at least indifference. Emily had yearned for a reaction that said Leo had nothing to do with this household, and particularly not with her husband.

Mrs Jaminel leaned forward and opened the gate with her free hand. Emily thought she saw deference in the act. She felt feudal, like the lady from the Great House come to make a kindness call on a labouring tenant. She loathed this impression. It suggested, didn't it, that Mrs Jaminel felt indebted to Leo - and perhaps to Emily also - because he and the firm looked after the Axbridge mortgage, the Axbridge provisions bill, the Axbridge electricity and gas, and perhaps other outgoings. The newspaper reports said Jaminel had a daughter, Astrid, studying at a northern university: would Leo take care of the fees and student loan? Might Mrs Jaminel think Leo had sent her to see things were OK, woman to woman?

And another question: might Mrs Jaminel mention to Leo, or to one of Leo's emissaries, who brought her the regular wherewithal, that Emily had been here? Emily realized, of course, that this notion showed she had more or less decided by now that she definitely wasn't going to get the kind of response she'd hoped for from Mrs Jaminel. Emily began to assume exactly what she had feared: Leo and the firm looked after Mrs Jaminel so as to keep her husband quiet about the removal of the undercover policeman. Axbridge equalled silence.

They went into a room at the back of the house with a view through French windows to the pebble beach, the island and the sea. The room contained a mahogany table with six dining chairs around it, and nothing else. Mrs Jaminel did not sit down nor invite Emily to take one of the chairs and sit down herself. In their straight-backed tidiness and, for today at any rate, their non-use, they announced to Emily that the era of boisterous, liquored-up, exuberant dinner parties here was over, the former host, Inspector Courtenay Jaminel, behind bars and his wife not inclined to entertain. And even if she did want company now and then, would company come to socialize with the wife of a much-publicized killer cop?

Or - second thoughts - perhaps the table and chairs didn't look like part of a household at all, but the ex-boardroom of a small, defunct company, possibly in the sand and gravel or wide shoe line.

Just the same, Mrs Jaminel had picked this venue for their talk, perhaps to keep things inhospitable and unleisurely. She had charge. Emily felt the atmosphere of their meeting change. That feudal role she'd imagined for herself vamoosed. There was no deference from Mrs Jaminel, not even defence; instead, a kind of aggro. She still had the gardening gloves on, still held the trowel. Emily saw something elemental about her now: Mother Earth. The gloves and trowel gave the message that this encounter was a distraction, to be quickly stifled so the crucial frontal weeding could get going again. Mrs Jaminel might reason, ‘OK, this is a tainted house, so all the more reason to keep it looking properly cared for and up to scratch. This property,
qua
property, will continue to be a credit to the Collit neighbourhood.'

‘I don't know why you've come here,' she said, mildly enough, but with her eyes behind the hefty spectacle frames fixed full and direct on Emily's.

Emily wanted, craved, to believe this: it signified, didn't it, no connection between Jaminel and Leo, or no connection Mrs Jaminel knew of. To be totally sure, Emily wanted to say, ‘But the mortgage for this lovely cottage - who pays it?' And, ‘The running costs, the food and drinks costs, who takes care of these?' And, ‘The university costs and jail visiting costs, who forks out for these?' But Emily didn't put the questions. It would be to ask Mrs Jaminel to turn Emily's guesswork into fact - the sort of fact she had come here to kill and bury. And if, as Emily hoped, Leo was
not
shelling out to her and her daughter, Mrs Jaminel would feel hurt, insulted, enraged.

She said, ‘It would be foolish of me to pretend there were not rumours - all kinds of rumours - at the time of my husband's trial, Mrs Young. Perhaps you heard some of those rumours and have kept them in your memory. Probably, they are what brought you to this house today. But they
were
only rumours.' She repeated that, her voice calm, matter-of-fact. ‘Only rumours. I take it you come to Collit now because you've begun to wonder about your husband's business, and from there to wonder also whether he had some part in the death of the undercover officer. You are not involved in your husband's commercial activities, if we may call them such, and it is to your credit that you suffer anxiety about the true nature of those activities; though some might think you've taken a long while to reach the position.'

Emily felt battered by the language, its fluency and poise, its bluntness:
if we may call them such
;
some might think you've taken a long time to reach that position
.

‘I presume you would like me to assure you that my husband was the only one involved in the killing. You imagine, do you, that I have some evidence to prove this, evidence I have never disclosed? But how can I help you in that fashion when I believed absolutely in my husband's defence at the trial, and believe it now - that he did not kill Mallen-Parry, either on orders, or as a private, work-alone figure? I consider the case against him was manufactured by two visiting police officers under severe pressure somehow to achieve a conviction and, in this way, allay, finish off the fears among senior law people in the Home Office that the original investigation into the murder was weak and dilatory because some local officers were accessories to the killing.' She raised the trowel, as if eager to get it back on duty. ‘I think that's us done, Mrs Young,' she said.

‘Yes,' Emily said. What else was there to say? Mrs Jaminel had produced an impasse.

She said, ‘I'd prefer that you didn't come out here again. You might be followed. I want no involvement with all that. These people are very wary, very resourceful, very ruthless.'

‘Involved with all what? Which people?'

‘Please, stay away.' Mrs Jaminel led out into the front garden and stood aside so Emily could open and pass through the Axbridge gate.

Emily closed it behind her and, before making for her car, said, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Jaminel.'

She nodded in reply, did not speak, might have been formulating in her mind some suitable eternal, farewell, such as ‘So, now fuck off, Mrs Young. Go home to your murdering hubby.'

As Emily drove away she glanced towards the cottage, but Mrs Jaminel was out of sight, bent over a flower bed and hidden by a stretch of privet. Emily recalled that pay-off line from the play
Candide
,
by Voltaire. ‘
Mais il faut cultiver notre jardin
' (‘But we must cultivate our garden'), meaning get on with necessary, basic chores and leave the vaguer, grandiose matters alone. Did Mrs Jaminel realize she was following a famous French theatrical character's recommended creed?