‘She pushed dog shit in my face,’ Frank said. ‘No one does that to me.’
‘There are different ways to connect, Frank.’
Rick really could have laughed, but that would have been unkind. God was sometimes good, but Christ, he worked in mysterious ways.
Peter Friel was finding it very difficult to see a connection between the man he faced and the woman he had known. Abrasive, aggressive, throaty-voiced, harsh-mannered, wily Marianne Shearer was so vulgar in her naked ambition that her sheer physical presence pushed one aside. She could spit contempt without actually spitting, while this old man was softly spoken, mellow, almost deferential in his guarded politeness and it was difficult to see what they might have had in common, apart from the attraction of opposites. He had the feeling that Stanton, QC, otherwise known as the Lover, would have loathed Shearer in an ordinary social context, would not be seen dead with her, despite the flattery of her being so much younger. He might have been ashamed of her had she been his daughter. What the hell was this paragon doing with a middle-aged harridan like Marianne Shearer and her plain, pug face? Old habits dying hard? Her availability, their athleticism, mutual sexual peccadilloes or what? Peter tried not to let his own speculations surface, although he did not resist a tendency to stare. Distracting himself from the scrutiny to which he himself was being subjected was not so difficult. He was sitting in a room he would remember for ever, at the end of a long day of visual feasts. He was in a world apart, sitting in a parallel universe. Peter found he was memorising details to pass on to Hen, and to Thomas. It was indeed cruel of the Lover to deny Thomas the sight of this room. Thomas would ache for it.
The Lover’s top floor apartment was safely within the confines of Lincoln’s Inn itself, set off to the side away from the main square, overlooking a courtyard thoroughfare on one side and Chancery Lane on the other, as if it formed a boundary between two worlds. How he had come by this and managed to keep it away from the grasp of all those lawyers greedy for priceless office space in this precious square mile was something Peter could not comprehend, but every one of the Inns of Court had leasehold anomalies and hidden gems guarded by old or privileged retainers. The three gates to Lincoln’s Inn were locked at night with massive doors. There were smaller doors contained in the larger doors for keyholders only. The idea of stepping through a door within a door had always delighted Peter, and now he felt he stepped through another door beyond. The Lover could look down into the courtyard and see the lights in the warren of offices go out, one by one, until only the ancient lamp lights were left. No one would see him looking. No one would see who came in with their own key. An excellent trysting place.
‘Excuse me, sir, I’m a little overwhelmed. It’s odd to be inside a place… so unusual. I’ve passed through a hundred times and never realised that anyone lived here at all.’
‘I don’t live here,’ the Lover said. ‘I live at home. In a large house, with an exacting, extended, adorable family whose admiration I wish to keep. My family has its squalid side, as in arguments, tragedies, noise, utilitarian architecture and the unattractive machinery of everyday life. I detest everyday life. You don’t need to know where I actually live.’
‘No, sir, I don’t.’
‘Good. I’ve come here, at least once a week for more years than I can remember, at first when I still worked, and later, gratefully, for the hell of it. Officially, I stay overnight for the committee meetings I still attend. Once you’ve finished looking at everything, perhaps we could get on to the matter in hand. I promise you there’s nothing more than you can see.’
A large, low-ceilinged room, spanning the top of the building, windows each end. An open door to a small bedroom with a huge Biedermeier bed, dressed in cream linen. An upright wardrobe in walnut, the contours framed in black. On the far side of the main room, a kitchen area rather than a kitchen, and, naked to the eye, a splendid bath half hidden by a painted screen. No modern planning permission would allow for any of it.
‘I understand the need for privacy, sir. I’m not Marianne Shearer’s executor. That’s Thomas Noble. I don’t have any obligation to reveal anything, nor inclination either. But I do have a job to do that she herself seems to have set out for me, which is to find out why such a woman took her own life and where she left her personal possessions. Including her instructions, her wishes, her clothes, her computer, her records of work and her phone. I was hoping you could help me. Mr Noble was hoping you would be the custodian of it all. My personal curiosity’s another matter and believe me, I’ve plenty of that. She was kind to me, once. I know what she was wearing when she died and I know all about her last case. None of that gives me an excuse to pry into how you live.’
‘No, it doesn’t. I suppose she broke every bone in her body on the way down from the sixth floor? The very least I’d have expected of her. Thorough. Death with a degree of style. Her own timing, but what a mess she must have made on the pavement. At least she avoided the tree, that would have been extremely undignified. Do you think she arranged the photographer in advance? He would have taken better pictures if she had. I wish she’d asked me. I could have told her exactly what to wear. I did wonder if that skirt was supposed to break the fall. Pity, it was one of my favourites. Also hers.’
Peter looked down at his own feet, planted on an exquisite carpet which covered half of the fine wood floor. Either old or reclaimed. There was another carpet hanging on the wall behind him, gilt mirrors on the walls either side, the constant risk of seeing himself, and the apartment, reflected. It was like a room from a small palace or a bijou hotel in Venice, requiring invisible servants of the utmost discretion or none at all. He wondered, like the pedant he felt, who kept it clean.
‘I could probably get you the Pathologist’s report in advance of the inquest if you want to know the details,’ he said carefully, reading an expression of sheer distaste on the Lover’s face. ‘I don’t know what was fractured on impact. You may be right, perhaps everything dissolved. I can only tell you there was very little blood on the skirt she wore. She upholstered it from the inside. Most of the bleeding was from the head, as far as I know. She died on impact.’
The Lover waved his hand dismissively, as if to say he was not really that curious. Peter could suddenly see what the two of them had had in common, which was a merciless objectivity that left no room for sentiment. Neither would have any time to waste on pity.
The Lover adjusted himself in his winged armchair, tapping his elegant fingers on the angled wings of the arms. The whole room was a poem of wood, fabric and mirrors. Oak floors, deco panellings. The owner of it was in love with another era and another way of living, but not entirely ruled by it. There were touches of modernity, in the form of a small but elaborate sound system, and the blessing of comfortable heating. What was certain was the old man was not wedded to the decade or year in which he lived now. In manners, dress and attitude, he belonged elsewhere. When he smiled he was powerfully attractive, an old rogue of a beast. It was equally clear to Peter that he himself had somehow passed a test, and the Lover wanted an audience.
‘This place,’ he said, ‘is a respite from the ugliness outside. I have an aversion to ugliness. I missed my real vocation, which was to design clothes for beautiful bodies. Preferably for androgynous yet feminine bodies like Marianne’s, but there was precious little scope for that when I was first apprenticed as a mere boy to Hartnell. Ghastly economy clothing and no sign of it ending, then. So I took to the Law, devoted my life to another kind of ugliness. Disputes about patents, designs, ephemera, the protection of same. I hate cheap, I was inordinately well paid. I always knew when something was original and authentic.’