The Winds of Change E-Book

Martha Grimes

• Herausgeber: Grove Press UK
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

When an unidentified five-year-old girl is shot on a grimy street in London, Jury knows this will be one of the hardest investigations of his career. He is joined by his colleague DI Johnny Blakeley, head of the paedophile unit of New Scotland Yard, who suspects Viktor Baumann, owner of an iniquitous house on the same street - an operation Blakeley has been long trying to shut down. Meanwhile, at Angel Gate, where Jury's trusty sidekick, Melrose Plant, is now a gardener, an unidentified woman has been murdered in the grounds of Declan Scott's estate. First on the scene is commander of the Devon and Cornwall police, Brian Macalvie. Three years earlier, Declan Scott's four-year-old stepdaughter, Flora, was abducted and shortly after her disappearance, her mother died too, leaving Declan bereft. Together Jury, Macalvie, Blakeley and Plant rake over the past and the present and find that all sign posts point to the guilt of Viktor Baumann, who happens to be Flora's father. But when no one in this case is exactly who they seem, how can Jury be sure?

Leseprobe

Praise for the novelsof Martha Grimes

The Winds of Change

“One of the winning trademarks of Martha Grimes’s novels is her ability to depict children in a realistic but sympathetic manner. With The Winds of Change . . . Ms. Grimes reaches a pinnacle. In this engaging and atmospheric mystery, she gives her legion of readers renewed reasons to bless her. . . . Delving into questions of identity, as well as issues of innocence, Ms. Grimes brings the full brunt of her talents to bear on The Winds of Change. This accomplished novel leaves the reader moved—and impatient for its successor.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“[An] absorbing mystery.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Another sturdy entry in her series.”

—The Seattle Times

“Finely written. . . . Fans will welcome the appearance of Jury’s gaggle of humorously eccentric friends and neighbors, including Melrose Plant, who goes undercover as a gardener to ferret out information . . . [an] engaging novel.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Nothing is quite what it seems at the beginning in this stellar entry in an outstanding series.”

—Booklist

“A fine entry in [Grimes’s] wonderful long-running series in which the jury of readers will appreciate the aptly named The Winds of Change.”

—Midwest Book Review

The Grave Maurice

“Sure to please. . . . Grimes’s writing has rarely been more lovely.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Wickedly clever . . . fans will rejoice.”

—Chattanooga Times-Free Press

“Plenty of wit, danger, and fully rounded characters.”

—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Atmospheric and moody . . . a compelling story.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Blue Last

“[Grimes] excels at creating a haunting atmosphere and characters both poignant and preposterous.”

—USA Today

“A diverting, chilling mystery of the past. . . . [Grimes] is at the top of her form. . . . Profoundly affecting and hauntingly sad . . . [an] explosive cliff-hanger ending.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“[Grimes’s] gift for evoking mood and emotion is as keen as her talent for inventing a demanding puzzle and solving it.”

—The Wall Street Journal

The Lamorna Wink

“Atmospheric . . . an elegantly styled series.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Swift and satisfying . . . grafts the old-fashioned ‘Golden Age’ amateur detective story to the contemporary police procedural . . . real charm.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“Charming, delightful. . . . Grimes fleshes out her characters with witty dialogue. Long may she write Richard Jury mysteries.”

—Chicago Tribune

The Stargazey

“Wondrously eccentric characters. . . . The details are divine.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“The literary equivalent of a box of Godiva truffles . . . wonderful.”

—Los Angeles Times

The Case Has Altered

“Richly textured.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Grimes is dazzling in this deftly plotted Richard Jury mystery.”

—Publishers Weekly

I Am the Only Running Footman

“Grimes at her best . . . more than mere suspense.”

—The New Yorker

“Literate, witty, and stylishly crafted.”

—The Washington Post

The Five Bells and Bladebone

“[Grimes’s] best . . . as moving as it is entertaining.”

—USA Today

The Old Fox Deceiv’d

“A good puzzle . . . unusually well written.”

—The Boston Globe

The Man with a Load of Mischief

The First Richard Jury Novel

“For readers who value wit, atmosphere, and charm in their mysteries.”

—The Washington Post Book World

Also by Martha Grimes

Richard Jury series

The Man with a Load of Mischief

The Old Fox Deceiv’d

The Anodyne Necklace

The Dirty Duck

Jerusalem Inn

Help the Poor Struggler

The Deer Leap

I Am the Only Running Footman

The Five Bells and Bladebone

The Old Silent

The Old Contemptibles

The Horse You Came in On

Rainbow’s End

The Case Has Altered

The Stargazey

The Lamorna Wink

The Blue Last

The Grave Maurice

The Winds of Change

The Old Wine Shades

Dust

The Black Cat

Vertigo 42

The Knowledge

Andi Oliver series

Biting the Moon

Dakota

Emma Graham series

Hotel Paradise

Cold Flat Junction

Belle Ruin

Fadeaway Girl

Other novels, short stories, and poetry

Send Bygraves

The End of the Pier

The Train Now Departing

Foul Matter

The Way of All Fish

Memoir

Double Double

First published in the United States of America in 2004 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Inc.

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic Inc.

Copyright © Martha Grimes, 2004

The moral right of Martha Grimes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from ‘Year’s End’ from Ceremony and Other Poems by Richard Wilbur. Copyright ©1949, 1977 by Richard Wilbur. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

E-book ISBN 978 1 61185 921 8

Grove Press, UK

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.groveatlantic.com

To my brother, Bill1929–2003

We fray into the future, rarely wroughtSave in the tapestries of afterthought.

—“Year’s End,” Richard Wilbur

TheLOST GARDENS

1

The blood spatter on the little girl’s dress mixed with the pattern of bluebells as if someone had thrown a handful of petals across her back.

Richard Jury was down on one knee in a gutter of a North London street, at the end of a dingy street called Hester Street, looking at the body, the face to one side, not quite believing it. He studied her—the pale hair, the eyes his hand had closed, the caked rivulet of blood that had run from the right side of her mouth, running down and across her neck and soaking the small white collar of the dress with the bluebells. His torch had made out the color. Even the blood could have looked blue in this difficult light. He thought it again—that the blood spots could have been petals.

It all seemed miniaturized as if everything—dress, body, blood—were part of some magical tale that reduced proportions, an Alice in Wonderland sort of story, so that at any moment the little girl would wake, the blood draw back into the mouth like a vapor trail and the dark stains on the dress dissipate, leaving only the flowers.

No coat. It was the first day of March and she wore no coat.

“A runaway, possibly?” suggested Phyllis Nancy, the police pathologist, who was kneeling beside him.

Jury knew it was a question to which she knew the answer. “No, I don’t think so; the dress looks new, that or very well kept, you know, washed and ironed.” What he was saying was rather ridiculous for who cared if the dress was ironed, but he felt almost as if he had to keep saying things, anything, just as Phyllis had done with her question. To say something, anything, was to hold the poor child’s reality at bay.

“Yes, you’re right.” The hem of her own dress was lying in a puddle of rain, and the rain’s detritus. It had rained heavily an hour ago.

Jury pulled the dress out of the muddy water. It was a long green velvet gown. When she had left her car and come toward the scene, she had looked regal in that dress. Emerald earrings, green velvet—she had been paged in the Royal Albert Hall and left immediately.

She had knelt beside him, on both knees, nothing to kneel on except the hard surface of the street itself. Her kneeling took almost the form of supplication. “I’ll turn her over. Would you help me?”

He nodded. “Sure.” She did not need help. Jury had seen her manipulate bodies bigger than his own, turn them this way and that as if they were feathers. She didn’t, he supposed, want to see the ragged exit wound and where it had come from, the blood the little girl was lying in. They turned her, weightless. The bullet hole was very small, as if even the bullet had reduced itself to fit the story.

Jury said, “Probably a .22, at any rate, small caliber.”

Phyllis Nancy said, “Richard, she can’t be more than five or six years old. Who would shoot a child in the back?”

Jury didn’t answer.

Around the two kneeling over the body there were the others: the uniforms cordoning off this part of the road with yellow crime scene tape; the police photographer; the other crime scene people and detectives from homicide; the couple who had been getting into their car when they found the body (she weeping, he with his arm around her); the mortuary van. Blue lights twirling and blinking everywhere. Police had fanned out to knock on every door in Hester Street, searching for someone who had heard or seen anything. Despite all of this activity, there was a strange hush, as if those who were moving were doing it on tiptoe, or talking, keeping it down to almost a whisper. The sort of hush one finds in early morning before the sleeping world becomes the waking one. Moving carefully, as if letting her sleep on.

Jury turned to Dr. Nancy again. “Can you estimate, Phyllis?” It could certainly not have been long. Even rolled halfway into the gutter, this was still a residential street, cars going back and forth or parked in the street, such as the one belonging to the couple.

“No more than a couple of hours,” said Phyllis.

“Probably less, I’d think. She’d’ve been seen.”

“I know. Really, how could she have been here for more than fifteen minutes without being discovered? In this little white dress?”

White, with bluebells, Jury thought, and blood soaked.

He would never have to see the little girl again unless he chose to, unless he found it necessary. But Phyllis Nancy had no choice; she would have to perform the autopsy; she would have to split the child open. What was that line from Emily Dickinson about splitting a songbird and finding the music?

Phyllis rose. He had never seen Phyllis Nancy lose it, not over the years and all of the dead and mutilated bodies between them; he was afraid he was about to.

He was wrong. When she’d been walking toward the crime scene a little while ago, she’d looked regal in that dress and those emeralds. Now mud splattered and pale, she still looked regal.

She made a sign and the mortuary van pulled closer to the little girl.

“Split the lark and you’ll find the music” That was it, the line from Dickinson. A fanciful idea for an autopsy. Jury looked down at this benighted child.

Bluebells and blood.

No music.

2

Wiggins was making tea, not an unusual thing except he was making it noisily: the canister rattling on the shelf, the spoon rattling against the cup, the pint of milk thumped down on the desk, the fresh packet of biscuits impatiently ripped open. He looked distraught. It was as if he were making this small commotion to cover his distress, or to signal it.

Jury had just walked in the door and took this minor commotion as a signal. “What’s up, Wiggins? You look as if you’d seen a ghost. That or DCS Racer.”

“I’ve some bad news, sir.” He dropped two tea bags into the brown pot and didn’t look at Jury.

The bad news was clearly for Jury. His mind fled immediately to Mrs. Wasserman, in her eighties now, and the only natural candidate for bad news. “What?”

Wiggins didn’t answer immediately.

“Come on, Wiggins. I think I can take it.”

Wiggins snapped off the electric water pot. “I’m afraid . . . well, it’s your cousin, sir. Your cousin—she died.”

For an insane moment, Jury didn’t know what Wiggins was talking about. He stood there, just inside the door, with that announcement of death seeming to preclude any movement until the cousin flashed in his mind and the world started turning again. His cousin up north, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m fixing you a nice cup of tea.”

As if this was not what Wiggins would do, death or no death. Jury almost smiled at this intrusion of Wigginsland. He sat down, still with his coat on, opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything.

“It was her husband called, name of—”

“Brendan.”

Wiggins was pouring milk into the mugs. “That’s it. He said the funeral’s to be on Saturday.” To give himself something useful to do, he checked his desk calendar. “That’ll be six March.” He handed Jury his mug of tea.

“Thanks.”

Probably trying to assess the measure of Jury’s grief, Wiggins said, “You didn’t see her very often, did you? I mean all the way up there in Newcastle, well, you couldn’t. But I got the impression you really didn’t know her all that well.”

Jury held the mug in both hands, warming them. “I didn’t, no.” He paused, thinking. “It was her dad, my uncle, who took me in finally after my mother died. He was a great person. The cousin’s his daughter. She was never like him, and she’s never really liked me—” Was that true, though? Brendan had gotten the exactly opposite impression, that she did indeed like him and was proud of Jury’s being so high up in New Scotland Yard. He rubbed his forehead. Was he going to have to try to revise memory again?

“Jealous, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Wiggins, blowing on his mug. “Her dad taking you in and all. He must really have cared about you.”

“He did.” But his cousin hadn’t, surely. Her talks with Jury were often barbed with sharp remarks and (Jury suspected) lies. He said, “The last time I saw her we were looking at pictures, snapshots and so forth, and she completely turned my memories on their heads. Things I thought had happened, hadn’t, not according to her. I honestly don’t know what I can depend on now.”

“She was winding you up, sounds like.”

“Maybe. That occurred to me, or that’s what Brendan said. We should be able to depend on our own memories, for God’s sakes.” He took a long drink of tea and set the mug down on Wiggins’s desk. “I’m going out for a bit. I need some air.”

He walked across Broadway to St. James’s Park, which he wandered in for a few minutes and then sat down. He really felt it, her death. He hoped it hadn’t been a bad one. He’d seen too many bad ones—gunshots, knives, the victims occasionally not dead yet and looking up with a look of dread. Jury hadn’t known she was sick.

It was fine for him to say he saw his cousin seldom and that he wasn’t close to her and that, actually, they had never liked each other. That could work in life; it didn’t work in death. But then nothing did, he supposed. Death had a way of kicking out the props, of smashing one’s carefully constructed defenses. Whatever comfortable conclusions he might have reached about Sarah were now as suspect as the events of his childhood. For maybe she hadn’t been lying to him; maybe he had really been but a baby when his mum died instead of the five-year-old kid who had tried to pull her out of the rubble of their bombed building.

How could he possibly have got that wrong? Impossible, surely. And what about watching the kids in their school uniforms treading off to school and wanting to be one of them? What about Elicia Deauville? She had to have danced in the room next door. Perhaps it was a different door, a different time.

No. Sarah must have been making things up. And wasn’t it typical—?

He left the bench and started walking the path again, his hands together behind his back, the stance of an old man. That was the way he felt. His cousin had been older, but not so much older he could dismiss her age as that of a vaguely “other generation.”

Stop thinking of yourself, he told himself. There were Brendan and the children, grown up except the baby, that was the daughter’s baby, she unwed, living with her mum and dad, mum taking care of the granddaughter while the tartish little daughter was out and about. Well, she’d better pull up her socks now, hadn’t she? Do what she should’ve done in the first place—

Oh, Christ, this carping. What in hell was he on about other than to fill his mind with images and inoculate his thoughts against what all this meant?

It was this: there was an emptiness that he hadn’t seen coming and that now he didn’t see how he could fill. This, with the death of a cousin he had never really known. A demanding, bitter, mendacious woman who spread no happiness, and yet . . . She was the end, except for himself. She had been the last one, the only repository of memories, the last one who had been there as part of his childhood tapestry and, because she remembered, might keep it from unraveling. She was the last one he could check with and whether she lied (and she would call it teasing) seemed almost beside the point.

Jury stopped, thinking this strange. Perhaps it was beside the point because she knew the truth enough to lie about it. No one else did now except for him. For some reason that made him feel the truth had gone and taken the past with it.

He had walked to Green Park by now and sat down on another bench. At the end of it was part of a Daily Express. He pulled it over and looked at the date. The second of March. He shoved the paper aside, having no interest in the daily affairs of the country, no interest in the royals or in David Beckham, or in the turn of the century.

He should get back to the office and call Brendan: the poor man must be going nuts over this. What could he do with the baby? There were no grandparents, at least on her side of the family. Maybe on Brendan’s there were, maybe in County Cork.

Jury knew he ought to get back to the office and call him. Yet he sat, leaning over, elbows on knees, poring over it, his last visit three months ago, his anger at her teasing contradictions and the pleasure she got from having the upper hand in memory. After all, Jury had been so young (she’d said) he really couldn’t remember anything. But she could.

He looked out over the park and remembered a line of poetry: Their greenness is a kind of grief. It was a March bleakness he saw. That made him think of finding a florist’s to send the family flowers, but he didn’t know where to send them, to what funeral home. Not to the flat. Brendan was not much good on the domestic end, to say nothing of being preoccupied, and the flowers would sit out of water until he tossed them away. Perhaps they would even pain him.

The thing was, Jury felt a need to do something. He wanted to make up for something, though he didn’t know what. Maybe for being the child his uncle really preferred, or maybe for giving Sarah a hard time when he was last there, before Christmas, or maybe for being the one still breathing when she wasn’t.

It would be spring soon despite the austere and shrouded look of the day. He thought again of Larkin’s poem: The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said. He liked poetry. He preferred the plainspokenness of someone like Larkin or Robert Frost. But then poetry was never plainspoken; it gave only the appearance of it. Like something almost being said. He could never have put that into any other words, yet it came as close to truth as he could get, he knew.

He told himself again he hadn’t even liked her. Then what was this tightness in his chest, this suffocating feeling (which he was glad Wiggins wasn’t around to witness)?

What came to him all of a sudden was a memory of Jenny Kennington the first time he’d seen her, running down the steps of her house in Littlebourne, holding a badly injured cat. She didn’t know Jury but she accepted a lift to the vet’s. She talked about the cat, which wasn’t hers, but a stray that must have gotten hit by a car. I don’t even like that cat, she’d said, once he was safely in the vet’s hands. Several times she’d assured Jury, I don’t even like that cat.

Right, he thought. Sure.

He walked down Piccadilly and turned into Fortnum & Mason, which was always in a state of pleasurable havoc. Everyone (and when wasn’t everyone in Fort-num’s?) seemed to be staggering under the canopy over the display of foie gras and cheese and prosciutto sliced so thin you could see through it. The wonderful black-coated staff, the bright fruit, the collective swimming smells of tea and citrus and money.

Then into Hatchards, a bookshop that smelled like books—leather, wax, dark woodwork. An atmosphere, a sensual experience that the mammoth Waterstones up the street couldn’t begin to match.

He walked on, stopping here and there, at a kiosk for a Telegraph, which he later tossed in a rubbish bin, unread. How had he got to Oxford Street? He looked in Selfridges’ windows. The faceless mannequins seemed to know the windows weren’t much to look at, not a patch on Fortnum’s. In their lightweight summer-to-come clothes so insubstantial a breeze could blow them away, their heads were bowed or jutting forward as if searching for an exit. On the sidewalk, a Jamaican selling his unlicensed wares, sharp, but not so sharp that he picked up Jury’s cop aura. Sticks of incense, tiny bottles of perfume so heady it would drop you in your tracks in a desert.

“You wife, you laddy fren, she like this, mahn. Women, they like this stuff.”

Jury purchased a few sticks of incense and a little stone holder.

Every time—the newspaper, the mannequins, the peddler—he’d forget for those moments and then turn away and it came back to consciousness that she was dead.

He had thought more about his cousin Sarah in the last couple of hours than he had in the last two decades. That’s what it was, death’s legacy—now there was plenty of time to think about the time wasted, the words unsaid, the history unshared, until it was too late. It’s always too late, he remembered someone saying. One can never have done enough, said enough. It was like the lager you could never finish: jokes about the wooden leg, the hole in the pint. An unquenchable, alcoholic thirst. You can never do enough for the dead. You search around for comfort but there is no comfort; there never was and never will be. There is only a gradual wearing away of the sharp edges, so that you don’t feel ambushed at every turn, as if you saw the dead suddenly rounding the corner.

For a while he rode the Piccadilly Line, then switched over to the Northern Line at King’s Cross. It was only in the underground he thought he saw such faces, no one looking happy, except for the teenagers banded noisily together, but even they, in an unguarded moment, looked pretty desperate.

While the antique Northern Line rattled the riders’ teeth, he looked at the girl facing him across the aisle, who was beautiful, but wasn’t taking comfort in it. She sat primly, knees together, hands clasping a small bag on her knees. Her hair was the kind you see in Clairol ads, long and shining. Above her in the parade of advertisements was one for a cold remedy depicting a skier happily taking a spill into a pile of snow. He was happy about it.

As the train clattered along, Jury studied an old Kit Kat wrapper on the floor, moving between high heels and scuffed boots. He watched it shift along, liking to think of themselves, he and Sarah, as kids going cheerily along to a sweet shop, but this image was his own concoction; he doubted they’d gone much of anywhere together.

I don’t even like that cat.

Right.

He got up for his stop at the Angel.

Darkness had registered on him while he was walking along Regent Street, but the time hadn’t. It was nearly ten o’clock. Where in God’s name had he been all of this time?

The lights were on in Mrs. Wasserman’s garden flat, and in a moment she was out and up the stairs in her old bathrobe.

“Mr. Jury, there was someone trying to get hold of you. Carole-anne said there were two messages on your answering machine and I was to tell you. From someone named Bernard.”

“Brendan?”

“She said Bernard.”

Jury smiled. “Carole-anne has trouble getting my messages straight.” Boy, did she ever. Especially the messages from females. Carole-anne had always thought the only life Jury would ever spend away from hers was an afterlife. “Thanks, Mrs. Wasserman.” He turned toward the steps.

“Is everything all right, Mr. Jury? You look pale.”

In the dead dark, how could she tell? Maybe he just sounded pale. “Yes . . . No. Actually I got a bit of bad news. My cousin died. Brendan’s her husband. That’s why he’s trying to reach me. To tell me.”

“I am so sorry. So sorry. To lose one’s family, that is the worst thing.”

It was as if, to her, all of the family were circumscribed in every member. To lose one was to lose all. “She was the last of the family. Except for me, I mean.”

“Oh, my. My.” She clutched the bathrobe tighter around her neck. “That is so dreadful. A person feels disconnected. I know I did. Like a balloon, that was how I felt. Drifting up farther and farther, a prisoner of gravity.”

Jury was surprised. Mrs. Wasserman didn’t often speak metaphorically. “That’s a good way of putting it, Mrs. Wasserman. That’s pretty much how I feel.”

“Could I make you a cup of tea?”

“That’s nice of you, but I think I’m too tired. I’ve been walking.”

She shut her eyes and nodded, familiar apparently with walking as anodyne.

“So I’ll say good night. Thanks for giving me the message.”

She turned away as he did and they went in.

As he put the key in the door of the first-floor flat, he heard a short bark, more of a woof. It was Stone, so Carole-anne must be out. She always looked after him when she was in. They all did, when they could. Sometimes Stan took the dog along, but not if there was to be a lot of traveling.

He plucked Stan’s key from a hook inside the door, went up to the second floor and opened the door. Stone did not come bounding out, as most dogs would; Stone was as cool as Stan. The most excitement he ever displayed was some tail wagging. He followed Jury down the stairs, went inside and stood until it was disclosed to him what he should do. He had the patience and self-possession of one of those mummers wearing white clown suits, faces painted white. They stayed amazingly still, still as statues, which people passing took them to be.

Jury found the rawhide bone and set it at the foot of his chair. Stone lay down and started in chewing. “I’m putting the kettle on.”

Stone stopped chewing and looked up at Jury.

“You want a cup? No? Okay. Want something to eat?” Stone woofed quietly. “That must mean yes. Okay.”

He left Stone to his chew. He plugged in the kettle and rinsed out a mug and dropped in a tea bag. The kettle boiled as soon as he’d spooned a can of dog food into Stone’s dish and called him. Then he poured water over the tea bag and let it steep while he watched Stone eat. That got boring, so he tossed the tea bag into the sink and went to his chair in the living room. He stared out of the window at blackness. In another minute he was up and rooting in his coat pocket, searching for the incense.

Jury fixed one stick in the rough stone holder and lit the tip. The dish in the kitchen clattered as if the dog were shoving it around with his nose. Stone must have smelled the incense, the strong fragrance of patchouli, for he left the bowl for this more interesting event in the living room. He sat beside the chair and watched the spindle of smoke rise toward the ceiling. He looked from the smoke to Jury and back again. His nose quivered a little, taking in the unfamiliar scent.

During that final visit to Newcastle last year, Sarah had retrieved her photo album and they had looked at snapshots of themselves as children, again throwing spanners in Jury’s memory works, although she hadn’t purposely done that; Jury had brought up the old days and her derisive mood had changed—she had simply wanted to look at the pictures. They had sat with the album on the table between them, turning pages. It was as if in this sharing of childhood pictures they were acknowledging something between them

You wife, mahn? You laddy fren?

No, it’s for my cousin.

He watched the thin trail of smoke curling toward the ceiling, and listened to Stone’s tail swish along the floor.

Like something almost being said.

3

The dead woman lay on a stone bench inside a stone enclosure that looked much like a shelter to ward off bad weather at a bus stop, as if she’d been waiting for one and simply fallen over, her torso on the bench, her legs off, feet dragging on the stone floor.

This shelter stood at the bottom of the large garden of Angel Gate. The garden had been neglected over the years and was now in the throes of refurbishment, being redesigned and reestablished. Thus, the first persons there in the early morning were the principal gardener and his daughter, a horticulturist. It was they who discovered the body. The next to arrive was the cook-housekeeper. She was busy giving tea to the father-daughter gardening team and any of the police who wanted it and who had arrived later from Launceston and Exeter.

Brian Macalvie, divisional commander with the Devon and Cornwall police, stood with his hands in his coat pockets. Standing about were some two dozen crime scene and forensics people from Launceston police headquarters and Macalvie’s people from Exeter. Brian Macalvie, motionless and silent, had been looking down at the dead woman for a good two minutes (“which you wouldn’t think was a long time,” one of his forensics team had said to a friend over a pint at the local, “but you just try it sometime; it’s an eternity, is what it is”).

No one standing right near Macalvie, then, was any more animated than the corpse. No one was allowed to touch anything until Macalvie was good and done. This irritated the doctor who’d been called to the scene (local and not indoctrinated to the divisional commander’s odd ways). He had made a move toward the body and had been roughly pulled back by his coat sleeve by the chief crime scene officer, Gilly Thwaite.

“For God’s sakes,” said the uninitiated doctor, “it’s a murder scene, not a funeral. I’ve got appointments.”

The others, nine or ten, squinched their eyes as if over an onslaught of headache or sun and stared at the slate-gray sky as Macalvie turned to the doctor. He was a general practitioner from Launceston, but adequate (everyone but Macalvie assumed) at least to do a preliminary examination in order to sign a death certificate. The Launceston M.D. whom Macalvie liked was unavailable.

“Let’s at least turn her over,” said the doctor. Then added, acerbically, “I think she’s done on this side.”

Gilly Thwaite made a noise in her throat. From here and there came a choked kind of laughter. Macalvie was not a fan of gallows humor.

Macalvie nodded to Gilly. “Go ahead.” Gilly set up her camera, got evidence bags ready, started taking pictures.

In the “lovely silence” (as he often called it, when there was some) Macalvie returned his gaze to the body. The woman appeared to be in early middle age. But appearances are deceptive and she could have been younger or older. He put her in her late thirties on one end of the age spectrum, early fifties on the other. That was a very wide divergence and it made him wonder. She was quite plain, her face free of makeup, at least as far as he could tell. There might have been a little foundation or powder. But no eye makeup. Her hair was mushroom colored, dull, cut in a straight bob that would fall, were she upright, to just below her ears. Her suit was the color of her hair. It was well worn and not especially fashionable, perhaps a classic cut, undated, a rough tweed. Macalvie looked for another fifteen seconds and then turned to the doctor. “All yours.” As the doctor grunted and stepped into the enclosure, Macalvie said, “And incidentally, for her, it really is a funeral.”

He then turned from the stone enclosure to look back at the big house that belonged to the Scott family, what was left of them. Macalvie remembered Declan Scott, the only one of them living there now. Declan Scott was a man who’d had enough trouble in his life: three years ago his four-year-old daughter had vanished. His wife had died not long after.

Macalvie knew Declan Scott.

The man really didn’t need a body in his garden.

4

When Jury got to New Scotland Yard the next morning, he called Brendan, rather ashamed of himself that he hadn’t done it the day before. He knew at least that it hadn’t been indifference.

“Are you all right, sir?” Wiggins was giving his mug of tea a thoughtful stir. Jury had declined tea, and in Wiggins’s book, that pointed to something truly dire.

“I’ve been better.” Jury half smiled as he punched in Brendan’s number.

“You got a call from Dr. Nancy and one from a DI Blakeley. Over in West Central. Isn’t he part of the pedophilia unit?”

“Right.” Jury slumped in his chair.

“You look kind of pale.” Wiggins would call up every anodyne he could muster. Of late he was into herbs and crystals, of which there were myriad combinations. (Rue that’s for—What had Shakespeare said? Remembrance, maybe?) Depression, Jury was sure.

A girl answered and it was unnerving that he couldn’t identify the voice. Which daughter was it? They were no longer girls, either, but young women. One of them was the mother of that baby who’d been handed over to grandmother Sarah. Christine? No. Christabel. Lavish names his cousin had picked. “Is this Christabel?”

“No. Jasmine. Chris ain’t here.” Thick Geordie accent.

“It’s really your dad I’d like to speak to.”

“Whyn’t you say?” She turned away and called for Brendan.

“Yeah?” said Brendan.

Tired of it all already. No, more defeated by it. “It’s Richard, Brendan. I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

“God, man, but I’m glad you called. I’m knackered.” Relief spilled over into tears. His words came muffled. “You’re coming to the funeral, right?”

“Of course. Saturday, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It’s a bit longer than I’d like, but my brother’s just getting out of hospital and he’ll want to come, so we’re waiting an extra day or two. Could I ask a favor of you, man?”

“You can. Anything.”

“If you could just float me a wee loan—?”

“Sure I can. I intended to take on some of the expenses anyway. So it’s not a loan; it’s me paying my share. She was the only relation I had left, you know. You shouldn’t have to bear the whole expense of the funeral.”

Wiggins (Jury saw) was listening avidly.

“Thanks,” said Brendan. “Thanks.”

“How much do you need?”

“Well . . . I was thinking maybe two hundred?”

The man would need more than that. “Are you sure that’s enough?”

“Yeah. Should be.”

“Doesn’t sound like enough for funeral expenses. You know the way they are—” Jury would just send more.

Brendan said, “Yeah. I dunno. Another thing—I’m worried about Dickie. This manager where he works—this punter’s giving him a hard time, as much as accused him of thievin’.”

Dickie was the child Sarah had had late, that’s all he remembered about him. “What’s Dickie say about that?”

“Not much. But I’m afraid this guy’s got it in for him.” A sigh. “Kids. Especially that age. He just doesn’t know where he’s headed.”

Who does?

“You know teenagers; they’re hard to get to.”

“I know they don’t think like adults, but why should they?”

“Right. See, you know this; you understand this. Listen: the service is to be at three p.m. Saturday. I’ll see you before if you can get up here from London.”

“Okay, Brendan.” Jury said good-bye and rang off. He felt somehow defeated again. He rooted around for an envelope and found one. Then he paused. “Hell, I forgot to get the street address—”

“I’ve got it right here.” Wiggins twirled the Rolodex.

That’s how much you’ve kept in touch, mate. Here’s someone who’s a perfect stranger to your relations and even he has the address. You don’t. “Brilliant, Wiggins.”

“It’s the funeral, is it?”

Jury nodded. “As you said, on Saturday.”

Wiggins nodded too, looking sorrowful. “I know how it feels. It’s like your life being put on hold.”

It’s more like the caller just hung up, Jury thought. “Did we get forensics on the little girl?”

“Yeah.” Wiggins passed over the report.

Jury looked at it. It confirmed what Dr. Nancy had said at the scene. There hadn’t been twelve feet between the shooter and the victim. The angle of the shot was down.

“You’d expect that. She was only five. Small.” Wiggins raised his hand, holding a gun of air. “Almost anybody would be taller than the child.”

“Uh-huh.” Jury pulled over a yellow pad and took a small metal ruler from the drawer of his desk. Using the criminalist’s numbers, he drew a line from 0 to 12. Then he drew another line for the trajectory. He came up with the same diagram (not that he’d expected otherwise) and started moving the gun closer: nine feet, six feet. The tattooing of the skin would be slighter the farther away. He looked at the morgue shots. Hard to say. The exit wound was larger; probably struck bone and took it along. He thought about the trajectory. He picked up the phone and called Phyllis Nancy.

“She was sexually abused, Richard. Of course she was just too small for penetration, but there’s still a lot of inflammation. But God only knows somebody tried. Five years old. Who’d do that? And it happened more than once. Who’d do that?” It sounded as if the words themselves were weeping.

“I don’t know, Phyllis. But I’m going to find out.”

Detective Inspector Johnny Blakeley headed up the pedophilia unit, but he himself was a one-man war. He found it difficult to hang about while proper procedure was put into place. He had had two near-career-ending inquiries, one because he’d roughed up a suspect and the other because he’d gone in without a search warrant. His dedication to his job was disputed by no one.

Jury remembered the five-minute answer to a question he had put to Blakeley about a case. You didn’t ask Johnny a question about pedophiles and expect brevity. And if you walked away, Johnny would still be talking.

“These freaks really believe they’re the normal ones and we’re the abnormal. They declare their love for their little sweethearts as fervently as any Romeo. They go on and on and on representing themselves as the vanguard of enlightened love. They’re educated, cultured. If once more I get referred to Socrates and his students, I’ll drink the fucking hemlock myself. They’re all so bloody self-referential it kills me.” The telephone got slammed against the wall. At least, that’s what it sounded like to Jury on the other end.

The phone at West Central was snatched up as if a hand had been hovering for hours just waiting; “Blakeley.”

“Johnny. Richard Jury here. You called me?”

“I did. This unidentified child, the little girl shot in Hester Street. I can’t ID her but I bet a year’s salary—no bet worth winning, clearly—I know where she came from.”

“Go on.” Jury yanked the yellow pad around.

“There’s a house in that street that’s been operating for years as a haunt for pedophiles. The woman who takes care of the kids—meaning, makes sure they don’t escape—is a piece of work named Irene Murchison. You remember I was, ah, hauled over by the inspectorate on the warrant charge? Well, that’s where it happened. Murchison has as many as ten little girls—I know this from the street—”

(Meaning, Johnny’s snitches—he paid them a bundle, that was the word out.)

“I tried until her solicitor slapped me with a harassment suit, which I acknowledged for a few weeks and then went back to harassing. Which got me in some trouble. Anyway, this little girl; you haven’t ID’d her, have you?”

“No. I’ve got people working the missing children list. We might get lucky.”

“It’d be nice, but good luck in this case seems to be out for lunch. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“What makes you so sure about this house?”

“Well, for one thing, the comings and goings. The men don’t live there. I stopped down the street several times and took pictures. Some days only a single client. I’m sure that’s what they’re called instead of sicko creeps. Some days one, some days six or seven. In and out, in and out. That’s for one thing. The other thing is a man named Viktor Baumann. He’s a sick creep, but he’s a rich, well-connected creep, a silky bastard. He’s a pedophile. The thing is Baumann has enough money to keep God knows how many plates in the air.”

“And this is one of the plates?”

“Absolutely. These men are prominent businessmen. What the hell are they doing in North London in that house?”

“But wouldn’t that amount to probable cause?”

“Nope. The Murchison woman is a coin collector. So are her customers. They come to buy-sell-trade. She does have a collection.”

“You had someone pose as a visiting businessman and a collector?”

“He didn’t get to first base. She knew something was wrong; Baumann hadn’t vetted my guy. There must be a sign they make, a password or something.”

“Tell me about Viktor Baumann.”

“He’s a big noise in finance in the City, that’s in addition to being a piece of filth. But I can’t touch him. There’s no evidence he actually controls this Murchison operation. But there’s another layer in all of this. In Cornwall, three years ago it happened: Baumann’s daughter, his daughter by his ex-wife, went missing. Kidnapped was what the local police thought at first, naturally. But there was never any ransom demand. There were several possible explanations, the most popular of which was that Baumann himself abducted her. Or had her taken, that is. He doesn’t do his own dirty work. The DCI who headed up this case put Baumann down as a prime suspect. The other possibilities were that some sociopath or sexual pervert grabbed her. But they couldn’t get to first base with that, either. Then there’s the possibility it was a deranged woman who’d lost a child and was pining for another one. None of these possibilities bore fruit. The kid’s still missing. She was only four.”

“Payback? Isn’t that possible? A parent whose child this Baumann abused wanting revenge?”

“Possible. But if Devon and Cornwall police couldn’t find anything, how could a citizen?”

“I don’t know. Different resources, maybe. Why is Baumann their chief suspect?”

“Ah, because he lost custody of the child and he’s been trying ever since to get it back. He couldn’t even get visiting privileges. He’s not one to accept failure. He wants what he wants and he’ll take it if that’s the only way. The police there could well be right.”

“Who did you have dealings with?”

“Macalvie. He was the DCI. Now he’s a commander, I think. He’s tenacious, that’s for sure.”

Jury smiled. “I know him. Tenacity is only the tip of the iceberg. I don’t think he knows what ‘cold case’ means. He never gives up.”

“Cop after my own heart.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

“Angel Gate,” said Brian Macalvie, on the phone with Jury. “That’s the name of the house. She was found in the gardens.” He was speaking of the victim, the dead woman they’d found lying on a stone bench in a stone enclosure.

To Jury the name—Angel Gate—sounded mythical. Gates of ivory, gates of horn.

“We don’t know who she is. She was shot dead on with a .22. Chest. We haven’t found the weapon. By now it’s probably at the bottom of the Ex.”

Jury made a small noose of the telephone cord. A .22. The little girl in Hester Street was shot with a .22. Not that this meant anything. He was in his flat, sitting in the one comfortable chair in front of the bookcase going over the autopsy report again together with the findings of the Hester Street house canvasing. “No leads at all?”

“No. We’re running her fingerprints. DNA won’t help unless we have something to compare it with, obviously.” He sounded impatient. “Declan Scott did see this woman once in the company of his wife. This was in Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair. She was also seen by the Angel Gate cook. But that was nearly three years ago.”

Jury said, “Well, then, you do have some sort of ID?”

“Uh-uh, Jury. Scott has no idea why she was with his wife; the cook—who’s no longer there—has no idea who she is, either. All she recalls is that the woman came to see Mary Scott. But neither cook nor Scott can ID her. No one in Brown’s recognizes the face, either.” Macalvie was silent for a moment. “This case needs your chronic melancholia, Jury.”

Jury moved the receiver from his ear, looked at it and returned it. “What in hell are you talking about?”

“About Declan Scott.”

“Go on.”

It took Macalvie a few moments to go on. “It’s hard to be around Scott for more than fifteen minutes. Have you ever known anyone like that?”

Jury reached round and pulled a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry from the bookcase, thought for a moment as he thumbed through the preface of the Dickinson book. He said, “Thomas Wentworth Higginson.”

“Who the hell’s he?”

“Emily Dickinson’s amanuensis, you could say. Her literary critic, editor, publisher—whatever. Anyway, that’s exactly what he said about her, that he could hardly stay in the same room with her for more than fifteen minutes. That she was so intense, so emotionally needy, she overwhelmed him. Not surprising, considering her poetry. What about Declan Scott?”

“The little girl, her name was Flora. She wasn’t his daughter, actually, but you’d never know it to hear him talk about her. About them. The wife died six months after the child disappeared.”

A double blow. “How did she die?”

“Heart, apparently. Scott found her in the garden. A garden within a garden, a sort of secret garden. You know.”

“No, I never had one of those. This is where you found the body this morning?”

“That was in another part of the garden, at the bottom.”

“Still. Coincidence?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who else is there? In the house?”

“The only other full-time person is the housekeeper. A Rebecca Owen, the cook and housekeeper, but even she doesn’t sleep there. He lives alone. There’s little connection at all, he says, between him and the dead woman. He didn’t really know her.”

“The words ‘little’ and ‘really’ strike me as the operative terms. He did have some connection, right?”

“I told you, Scott had seen her once having tea with his wife, Mary. The wife said she was an old school chum. Roedean.”

“And obviously this dead woman wasn’t the old school chum because you’d have Roedean nailed to the wall. And you’d know who she is by now.” Silence. “So there’s a connection between the old case and this one.”

“Must be. The victim could have been involved, I think. It’s been three years since the little girl disappeared. Probably you’d say Declan Scott should let go of it.”

“Why in hell would I say that? Time passing could make it even worse.”

No reply.

Macalvie really did not want to have to question this man. Jury thought about this.

Macalvie said, “That’s the reason, see?”

“What is?”

“What you just said about time making it worse. Most people are of the ‘time-heals-all-wounds’ school. It’s why you’d get on with him.”

Jury smiled and shook his head. “Where was the daughter taken from? The house? Grounds? Where?”

“The Lost Gardens of Heligan.”

Jury switched the receiver to the other shoulder, the other ear. “The Lost Gardens of Heligan? Sounds familiar. I’ve never seen it, but wasn’t that the big restoration project going in Cornwall? That and—what’s the other one?”

“The Eden Project.”

“Heligan is a kind of restoration, isn’t it? The gardens were there already, but had sunk into nothing, I mean, gone to seed.”

“That’s right,” said Macalvie.

“Well, I’ve never known melancholy to solve a case. Lord knows, not mine.”

“You wouldn’t know, would you? In this case I’m not so sure. Declan Scott—well, you’ll see what I mean. It’s the past. He doesn’t just remember it, he lives in it.”

“Don’t we all?”

5

Tall, thin, dressed in black, sleek as a seal, Baumann’s secretary was on the telephone when Jury walked into the office. As he waited for her to ring off, he looked around this richly furnished room. Furniture as slick and angular as she was, black leather and glass. The wall to his left contained several glass-fronted shelves on which were displayed rows of coins against black velvet. Jury thought about what Johnny Blakeley had told him.

When she finally returned the phone (also sleek) to its cradle, he told her who he was and that he’d like to see Mr. Baumann.

“Mr. Baumann never sees anyone before ten.” Elaborately she examined her watch.

“That’s a shame because I have to catch a train at ten-thirty.”

She looked at her appointments book with frowning deliberation. Finally, she raised her eyes and said, “I don’t believe you have an appointment, in any event?” She registered this as a question in case he wanted to get into it with her.

“No, I don’t”—Jury glanced at the metal nameplate on the desk—“Grace.” First names generally brought them down a peg. Her eyebrows worked their way up, astonished at this liberty. “This is my appointment.” He smiled winningly and shoved his warrant card toward her. “New Scotland Yard CID.”

She pushed her secretary’s chair back and got up. Still frosty, she said, “I’ll just see if he can speak to you now.”

“I suggest he does.” It never quite worked when Jury tried to sound menacing. There was always that joke hiding behind it.

She went to a double door on her left, cherry and several inches thick; she pushed it open. He heard her mumble something to the occupant of the cushy inner office. Then she turned and pulled both doors open—both doors, dramatic entry. After she stepped inside, he heard her murmur something before she turned to wave him in.

Viktor Baumann rose and came around his desk to shake Jury’s hand and say, “I’m glad the police haven’t forgotten Flora. Especially Scotland Yard. She’s been missing now three years. I want to help in any way I can, of course. Please sit down, Superintendent.” Baumann reclaimed his desk chair, which looked like one of those German designs of aluminum and leather so lightweight it could have levitated.

Another office furnished with killer designer furniture, but this one was more spacious than the outer. Jury imagined the paintings were not only originals, but by contemporary painters he wouldn’t know.

Jury said, “I’m with homicide, Mr. Baumann.” Then, when Baumann fell back into his chair, Jury realized his error and quickly said, “No, not your daughter. I’m sorry. The murder is of a woman we can’t seem to trace.” He removed the police photograph and reached it across the space between their chairs.

Baumann glanced at it and looked away. “Sorry. I’m squeamish about the dead. And I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”