Walking into the Ocean (12 page)

“Tell me about her again.”

“Born in Romania, a city called Iasi. She was close to her mother, also called Anna, and flew back occasionally to see her. Father Vogans, her priest, said she was discouraged by her inability to persuade the mother to emigrate.”

Joan judged that she had seen enough for a first go and needed time to retrench. She wasn't sure why. Even if she decided to tour the house again, she wanted to digest what she had just seen. She now appreciated what her husband went through on an average murder case. She paused in the hall again.

“Was she very religious?”

“I think religion helped keep the connection with Romania real for her. But when she visited St. George's, the Romanian church, it wasn't so much for Sunday services as to see the priest.”

They went out to the back steps for a break, both glad of some fresh air. She could tell that he was waiting for her to gather her thoughts. She leaned against the wall and turned to him.

“Three comments, Peter. First, assuming they were both after each other in the fight, that they were taking the battle
to each other
, they were oddly selective in what they trashed. Wouldn't you have flung that pot of sauce at him, or vice versa? She's running through the rooms, eventually into the kitchen, and she sees the pot? Irresistible. Then the living room: someone pulls down the curtains. You're the one with experience of these domestic fights, but why would they yank down the curtains yet leave the pictures on the walls, undamaged?”

“That bothered me too. The good vase was shattered. I thought at first that he was out to hurt her by destroying her prized objects, but there were other things left untouched. The icon, for example.”

“That's my point. Here's what I think.” She held up a hand, trying to hold onto the logic and keep everything straight, in effect telling him to bear with her while she explained her theory of the fight. “The drapes were pulled down but not otherwise harmed. The broken vase was nearby, and one of them could have taken a piece of glass and slashed the curtains. They didn't. The same with the icon. Why didn't he break it, and really batter her feelings? It was a link for her to the old country, a link that I bet irked him. The same with the bedroom and the kitchen. Why not trash everything? And frankly, angry spouses like to throw pots and pans.”

She paused and they looked at the dismal back garden. He wanted to keep her in her zone.

“Tell me your thinking, Joan. Where does all this lead you?”

“Horrible as it is to even think it, I think she was responsible for almost all of the destruction. I think she pulled down the curtains but valued them enough not to cut them up. The glass vase? That was a wedding present, I'm confident, and I bet it came from the ‘other' side of the marriage, depending which one of them broke it.”

“And the second thing?”

“The second thing somehow connects to the first thing. If this was truly a room-to-room, back-and-forth war, it's incredible to me that there wasn't a drop of the husband's blood. Glass was flying. Blades cutting. I don't have an explanation.”

Joan looked out at the shabby back garden, overgrown with weeds.

“I wonder how it worked for him,” Peter said. “If she hurt him, physically, she still didn't manage to stop him from going. If he wasn't hurt, he remained a cold-hearted bastard, unmoved by her panic and her wounds.” He paused, letting her get to her final point at her own pace.

“The officers who went through the house, were they all men?”

“Yes, as far as I know.”

“The medical people, the person who signed the death certificate, the coroner I suppose, men too?”

“I believe so,” he replied.

“Peter, I agree with your feeling that something is very wrong with this house. It gives me the shivers.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No, that's not what I mean. The woman was desperate for something. And the husband obviously was desperate to leave her.”

Joan was surprised at how exhausted she was. She heard a clock chime one o'clock in the distance. Focusing on the back of the property, she thought it odd (as Constable Willet had) that, given André Lasker's profession, there was no work shed, and no car parts anywhere in the garden.

“The most blood was in the lavatory,” she finally stated, as if confirming the most salient fact about the killing ground.

“That's right. In the sink and the bath.”

“Were the cuts on her arms deep?”

“Yes. The worst were two slashes across her left forearm, and a third lengthwise. There were other cuts on her left shoulder and her right wrist, but not as deep. Some of the blood in the sink and around it came from the head wound, when she was slammed into the mirror.”

“On
TV
they talk about defensive wounds. Was the cut on her arm a defensive wound?”

Peter smiled. For a moment there her speech rhythms sounded like his. “If they were fighting at close quarters, then anything could have happened in a messy situation like that. The gashes were to the inside of the arm. Maybe defensive, but I kind of doubt it. And they weren't caused by the fall from the cliff.”

“Peter,” Joan said, looking directly at him, “you know the blood on the upstairs walls and in the bath?”

“Yes.”

“It was menstrual blood.”

They heard a sound from the front part of the house. Peter silently motioned for her to stay put. He went back into the kitchen. For the next couple of minutes, Joan made out only a few sounds, but then heard voices from the kitchen.

Peter emerged onto the back porch followed by a constable. Joan didn't flinch at the sight of the police officer but knew that this was trouble. Still, she smiled as if all were normal.

“Joan,” Peter said, “I'd like to introduce Constable Willet. He's been very helpful to me in Whittlesun.”

“Madam,” Willet said, barely making eye contact. It was somewhat farcical, Joan thought, the three of them crowded onto the back porch of a dead stranger's home, Willet's stomach threatening to bump someone down the stairs.

“Shouldn't be here,” Willet said, bluntly. “Neighbour called in an alert. That's why I'm come out.”

“Yes, well,” Peter said. “I had to do a final check on the computer files. Something I forgot to do yesterday. My wife's in town so we stopped by on our way back to the hotel.”

Willet must know, Joan thought, that they had no vehicle and therefore their visit was deliberate. Still, she sensed that Willet was too much the deferential gentleman to raise the point. She avoided looking at her husband; otherwise she would have giggled. For his part, Willet didn't know what to say. There would be a report back to Maris forthwith, they all knew. Peter decided to go in for a pound and raised the door key.

“I got this under the flower pot back here. I was just putting it back.”

This lie allowed Willet to save face. They traipsed into the house and right out the front door. Willet went first but paused to make sure that Peter and Joan locked everything up. Peter could think of nothing to say in the face of this mother-hen treatment, and so they all exchanged a perfunctory “goodbye.”

Willet walked down the wet cobbles to his motorcycle, which he charged up with a great roar that must have jolted all the neighbours.

Peter and Joan headed with no particular haste back along the street. They didn't speak at first. The tragedy they had just viewed outweighed the farce with Constable Willet. These were common enough sights in a crime zone, Joan knew, but domestic violence brought its special, targeted forms of hurt.

As they turned off the cobbled streets into the commercial district, she turned to Peter. “Do you think he had
everything
planned?”

Peter hesitated. Joan could see that he was gathering his thoughts in order to be precise. “Most of it, yes, but not all. I think he set the exact night that he would disappear. He worked out the details, like abandoning his clothes in a neat pile on the beach. This was the night, yes. You don't alter such a plan easily.”

Joan knew that it was so much worse. This form of desertion, without a word of warning or a scintilla of caring, was the nastiest thing André could have done. She was uncertain still about one thing.

“Did he plan all along to kill Anna?”

Peter paused again, but eventually let out his theory. “No. That wasn't his plan. I think she somehow found out and confronted him, just when he was almost away and clear.” He squeezed her hand.

And then Joan realized that there were some facts that her husband wasn't going to disclose — not now and maybe not later. It wasn't to save her from the ugly truth — he had just exposed her to the saddest realities imaginable. It wasn't because professional codes prohibited disclosure of the bottom-line truth — he had opened a secret door to her that, she knew, he could not close completely. No, she had helped him, but Peter was already moving on to the next stage of the case. Her mind might be full of horrid images of broken mirrors, blood-drenched sinks and a dying woman's handprints, but his head contained whole floating universes where she held no domain. She grasped ruefully that she would not likely be present when the planets aligned.

They found a comfortable pub along the route. A couple of lagers lightened their mood. All things considered, she was happy.

“Thank you again, dear,” he said, leaning across the table to give her a kiss.

She laughed. “Stop, Peter! That's the fifth time you've thanked me. You're welcome. But I have a confession to make.”

Peter noted her wry smile. Sensing that she had the advantage, he simply said, “I'm listening.”

“I've been sneaking into your Conan Doyle out in your side of the shed.” She saw that he was amused, but waiting for her to continue.

“Okay.”

Joan recalled that the Holmes set had been layered with dust, a sign that Peter hadn't been reading any of the stories lately.

“I know your
Complete Sherlock
is one of your prized books.”

Peter laughed out loud, something he didn't do often. “That's your confession? Which stories do you like best?”

“I love them all. I read
A Study in Scarlet
first but then, for some reason, I've been reading the stories in reverse order, back to front. Holmes and Watson are getting younger.”

Peter laughed again. Joan was content. For the next two hours, they were both detectives, equal, as they discussed their favourite stories. By the time they returned to the hotel, they were both tipsy.

Hotel sex is as good at sixty-seven as it is at twenty-seven. Afterwards, still in the waning daylight hours, they lay side-by-side, she feeling very much appreciated. She turned to him and said, “Do you think he told her about the details of his plan before he killed her?”

He continued to watch the shadows on the ceiling above the bed. For some reason he glanced at the door, knowing quite well that the chain was on. He rolled towards her on the mattress. “Yes, Anna Lasker knew before she died that he was planning to leave. Forever.”

They talked for a few more minutes about the children. She didn't mention that he had called her a few minutes before her scheduled departure to see Michael, but now she told him that she would take the train in the morning from Whittlesun Station to London to shop for the day, and would go on to Leeds for a quick visit.

“I'm pretty sure I'll be home in a day, two days at most,” he said, “although I'll have to come back here sooner rather than later.”

They lay there a while longer. She didn't dare ask how he thought the case was going. She knew that she had helped him, yet she could feel him slipping away. But after another moment, he said precisely what she needed to hear: “I will tell you every detail of the case as soon as I can, dear.”

Since their schedule was out of whack anyway, they napped for two more hours and then went for a walk just as the lights along the high street were coming on. There was a nip in the air, and they agreed that the weather along the coast was more changeable than they were used to, and the morning would probably be warm again. They returned to the hotel and ordered sandwiches and beer to their room. They sat on the bed, cross-legged like campers around a fire, and got crumbs on the duvet. They discussed the Rover investigation. Peter told her most of what he knew.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“Anything.”

“I'm not asking you to speculate about this Rover, but how do you think he'll be found, ultimately?”

Joan had observed that Peter was disturbed as much by the Rover case as by Lasker. Perhaps for the first time in their marriage, he was seeking — though in an unspoken way — her reassurance about a case. During the Yorkshire Ripper manhunt he had become depressed, but then, everybody who worked on that calamity was haunted by the serial killer. At the time, Peter's solitary methods had ceded to the endless meetings and the team effort. He had pulled out of his funk eventually. Now, Joan worried, was he back in that zone?

“Put it this way,” Peter replied. “We don't know enough about the Rover. The file provided by the Task Force is general stuff, most of it public anyway. Thin on the forensics and no witnesses. The Task Force thinks it has pinned down a pattern. Four girls now. They think he's moving in a straight line down the coast, closer to Dorset with each abduction. McElroy's team doesn't get it.”

“Get what?”

“There's no pattern at all. He's toying with them.”

Joan stroked his cheek. “Well then, dear, you'll have to join the Task Force.”

In the morning, Peter stood in front of the hotel as Joan got into the taxi that would take her to the station. “Stay safe. I'll call tonight.”

She said to him, “watch out for the Rover.”

A pang of loneliness hit her as her taxi pulled away but she smiled and waved. She didn't know that he felt a similar moment of loneliness as he watched her go. The morning was bright and warm. He turned into the hotel. It was time to get back to the files and then start on his appointments. He wondered if he could put off Maris for another day. There was going to be hell to pay on that front once Willet reported back.