The Blue Last (33 page)

She smiled and slid the egg onto his plate, removing one of the two sausages from his plate to hers.

“No, no. Put that sausage back. I can manage two. Just.” He adored sausages.

Plates loaded, they went into his living room and sat down, Carole-anne at the end of the sofa near the starved tree. “That tree wants trimming, Super. You got some little blue and white lights somewhere, don't you? Mrs. W has hers all done up with snow and tinsel over the lights and a silver star on top. It's lovely.” When he just went on eating a sausage, she shrugged. “I guess I'll have to do it as you're not in a very Christmasy mood, are you?”

“I was the one who went and got the trees, remember?” He'd bought a large one for Mrs. Wasserman, a small one for himself, a smaller one yet for Carole-anne, since she had a studio on the top floor and little room.

Still, she looked sad at its unencumbered state. It was a bit shabby, Jury thought, a secondhand tree. He had waited too long and the shapely ones were gone.

“It needs lights, it needs color.”

“Go stand by it.”

She frowned over a wedge of fried bread. “Is that a compliment? I can never tell.”

Jury sniggered over his bread.

“Anyway, there's a surprise present Mrs. W wants. Oh, and me, I want one, too. I said I'd tell you what it was.”

“If you tell me, then where's the surprise?”

“Right now, before I tell you. What we want is that you take us to see
The Mousetrap.
”

He just looked at her.

“You know. That Agatha Christie play that's been here for years and years.”

Dashing her hopes, Jury said, “I've seen it.” He did not add that it was so long ago he couldn't remember it.

Carole-anne was the only woman he'd ever seen make a significant gesture out of hands-on-hips sitting down. “You
could
see it again.”

“I didn't know you liked mysteries. You're even reading an Agatha Christie.” He nodded toward the book on the coffee table. Books were not Carole-anne's raison d'être.

She picked up the book, tossed it down. “That's just to study up on before we see the play.”

Study up on Agatha Christie before one sees her? Well, one might read Dante before going to Florence or T. S. Eliot before visiting Burnt Norton. “I don't like mysteries, love; there's already too much mystery in my own life.”

“
Life?
Mysteries don't have anything to do with life! They're completely unlife; they're nonlife. There's no relation to reality at all.”

Jury felt as if he should defend this sorry genre. “Some of them do, don't they?”

“No. So if that's why you don't like them, well, you can stop now.”

How was it her argument was so inherently refutable, yet he could think of no refutation?

“I called and they had tickets for the week between Christmas and New Year's?” It was put as a question; her look implored.

Jury was surprised she'd resisted buying them.

“You will, won't you, Super?”

Of course, he'd take them. To tell the truth, he sometimes thought they were all in the same boat, whatever that might be. “I'll think about it.” Her expression implored, but he refused to capitulate to that deep turquoise look, at least not immediately.

Carole-anne speared a sausage bite and continued. “We decided we'd have Christmas dinner at Mrs. W's instead of here.”

By “here” she meant Jury's own flat. Looking around his small living room and the round table covered with a runner that would seat one comfortably, he said, “Can't imagine why. But why not go out to someplace where the furniture is actually geared to people sitting down and eating?”

She looked blank.

“A restaurant.”

Nearly tilting a rasher of bacon and fried bread from her plate when she sat up, shocked, she said, “On Christmas Day? You must be daft.”

“Well, there must be a whole host of the daft out there because a lot of people eat out. Saves cooking, washing up, talking to people you have nothing to say to, et cetera, et cetera.”

“I should certainly hope you don't mean our Mrs. W.”

That he might mean Carole-anne was beyond all reason. He smiled. “Of course not. I love talking to both of you.”

She resumed her eating.

He spiked a bite of sausage with his fork. “I'd better stop eating so much. I'm getting fat.” He glanced at her to see how she'd take this.

“You?
Fat.
Oh, don't be daft. If you were getting fat I'd be the first one to tell you.”

He smiled. “Wasn't there one more sausage?”

 

 

 

The next morning, Jury stopped by Mrs. Wasserman's garden flat. It was “garden” only by virtue of its being lower ground floor and its promise of opening out onto great vistas in the rear of the house. But that remained only a promise, much like the one for the new cooker. The flat could have been as easily (and more honestly) called “basement.”

Mrs. Wasserman opened the door—or rather “undid” it—as there was much unbolting and sliding of locks and chains before it opened.

“Mr. Jury!” She clasped the collar of her chenille robe together. Her hair was still rolled and under wraps—didn't that bonnet she was wearing used to be called a mob cloth? She said, “Pardon me for looking so—
deshabillé.
Is that the word?”

It was, but Mrs. Wasserman wasn't it. Carole-anne was it, a lot of the time. Jury smiled. “You look exactly like you should a little after eight A.M.” He regarded the flowered cap.

She followed his glance and explained. “Carole-anne thought my hair would look nicer with just a bit of color. She thought it would give me more of the
demi-monde
look.”

Where was Carole-anne picking up these words? Hanging around Tony and Guy's salon in her off hours? The thing that amused him was that they were archaic.

“As far as I'm concerned, you don't need a new look. I like the old one, especially your hair.” She had lovely hair—not gray, not white. Platinum. “But then I expect we all get bored with the way we look.”

“Come in, come in, Mr. Jury. I'm leaving you standing in the cold.” With a strong gesturing of her arm, as if she would encompass all of him, she waved him into the flat. “I wanted you to see my tree, anyway. I just put the kettle on; I hope you'll have a cup of tea.”

“Thanks, I'd like that.” He watched her go off to the kitchen and turned to look at the tree. Mrs. Wasserman had always been as much Christian as Jew; he remembered years ago her discomfort at this, as if she were doing something neither Christian nor Jew would ever countenance. Jury had the impression that her mother had not been a Jew, but this had not saved either of them from the concentration camps.

The tree was as beautiful as Carole-anne had said. White lights winked behind shimmering tinsel, patches of cotton looked amazingly real and a big silver star glittered in the reflected light. Beneath the tree were several presents, wrapped in a paper he wasn't used to seeing anymore, figures of skaters on ponds, of families joining hands around the Christmas tree, of people singing carols. The colors were dull reds, browns and greens. Nothing glittered, nothing shone. In among the faded packages sat a small crèche, and he crouched down to get a closer look. The little wooden figures he could almost hold in the palm of his hand, including the three Wise Men and the camel. The lamb, the goat and the dog stood as he supposed they always would.

He was suddenly drawn back to that pub near Durham called Jerusalem Inn, and the little girl—Chrissie? Was that her name? Her doll had been enlisted to play the role of the Christ child. Chrissie had not liked that, and had kept taking the doll away. Scenes came to him in a rush—that Christmas at Old Hall, Helen Minton and that long expanse of sea and beach in Sunderland. He was flooded with memories; he could barely breathe for the sudden sharp pain. It was ridiculous, absurd. He tried to laugh but had no breath for it and the effort only made the pain get worse. This is not the way it's supposed to happen. Wondering if the weight of memory was killing him, he took shallow breaths. Breath that barely touched the diaphragm. God, but he felt woozy: was he going to faint? He didn't move. The pain stopped just as suddenly as it had started.

He forced his eyes open and looked at the crèche and waited for his head to come round, his thoughts to clear. The pain, he thought, was too sudden and swift to be serious. He was still crouched down, looking at the crèche. Chrissie made him think of Gemma, Gemma out in the greenhouse in the dark, the greenhouse itself lighted, the light pooling below the windows, shadows looming like closet monsters.

“Here's tea, Mr. Jury. I used my Fortnum and Mason Christmas tea.” When he didn't answer, she asked, “But are you all right, Mr. Jury?” She put a delicate hand on his shoulder as he crouched there.

He rose tentatively to his feet. “I'm fine, Mrs. Wasserman; I was just admiring your crèche.” He accepted the cup of tea she held out to him.

“You know, I've had it forever, since I was a girl. Yes, I know it sounds impossible I could have kept it through all that happened. How I kept it in the camp was to hide the pieces on me—down my front, Mary under my scarf, the Wise Men in my socks and shoes. It's a miracle they never found them. I only lost one camel.”

Jury smiled. “One camel. I guess I could live with that.”

Looking at him, she said with all the mildness in the world, “But you never had to, Mr. Jury.”

He knew it was not a reproach; she would never reproach him. It was a simple statement of fact, but he felt it nonetheless, what separated them, an unbridgeable gulf.

He raised his teacup. “Land of hope and glory, Mrs. Wasserman.”

“Happy Christmas, Mr. Jury.”

“
G
et your skates on, Wiggins, we're going to Southwark. I need your fine-tuning.”

Wiggins had just set down the telephone receiver and picked up a glass of gummy-looking pink liquid. “Fine-tuning, sir?”

Jury was at his desk now, sorting through a sheaf of papers from Fraud and routed through Chief Superintendent Racer to Jury. Thinking aloud, Jury said, “What the hell's he trying to fit up Danny Wu for now?” Danny, he bet, was running something on the side, but it wasn't arms, opium or hookers.

Wiggins tried again. “Fine-tuning you said?”

“Huh?” Jury skimmed several papers off the top of the pile and shoved the others in a file drawer. “That's right, Wiggins. Have they still got you shackled to that Greenwich case?”

Wiggins smiled. “Still shackled, sir, but nothing's stirring at the moment.”

“Good. Southwark is where we're going as soon as Racer disses me for whatever's on the menu today. What I need is your well-nuanced, closely calibrated method of interviewing.”

“Well, thank you, but when it comes to questioning witnesses, there's nobody better than you, and I mean that.”

“Wrong, Wiggins. You are.” Jury flashed him a smile and left the office.

“Two more murders in Limehouse.” Racer seethed. “Obviously gang related and you're resting on the laurels of that Brixton shoot-out. Since when did you start carrying a gun, Jury?”

“Since the assistant commissioner's last decree.”

“You carrying now?”

“Of course not.”

“Too bad. You could've put a bullet in that cat. He's in here, somewhere. I can smell him.” Then Racer went on about Brixton and Limehouse while Jury's eyes scanned the room.

A new piece of furniture had been delivered and occupied a space near the library shelves, behind whose bottom doors Racer kept his supply of whiskey. It was locked up as tight as a crowd of Millwall supporters at a match. This had not been done to keep out people, but to keep out the cat Cyril.

Jury would have been delighted to give Cyril a home—so would Fiona, so would Wiggins—but removing him from these offices would so seriously curtail Cyril's activities, it would be cruel. Racer had tried every way imaginable of getting rid of Cyril—poisoning, trapping, electrocuting. The bowl of milk on the floor with the live wires running into it hadn't worked either, surprise, surprise.

The doors of the secretary were open, revealing a line-up of little cubbyholes, much like the ones behind a hotel desk into which mail and keys are slotted. Behind the cubbyholes was empty space. Jury knew this well, remembering a similar piece of furniture in Trueblood's antiques; that one had housed a dead body. The cubbyholes were no doubt intended to house little writerly items such as quills, wax, ink or cat's eye. This is what Jury saw peering from behind a cubbyhole. The eye looked at him and then moved on to another hole. Jury smiled.