‘Well, with lawyers you always want to be sure your shots are up to date.’
Another pause. I guess Carla was hoping I’d take the hint without being asked: it can’t be easy to beg favours from your dead husband’s friends. But I was feeling like my humanitarian impulses had led me far enough astray today already. I drank off what was left of my coffee, put down the mug and stood.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘try to tell yourself that he’s only doing his job. It’s the truth, more or less. Thanks for the coffee, Carla. If you change your mind, call Pen. She’s got a room free and she’d love the company.’
Carla nodded, with only the very faintest sign of hurt in her eyes. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ she said, sabotaging my got-to-be-moving-along routine when it was just getting into second gear. Since I didn’t have any other choice, I stopped and waited while she got up from the table and started to rummage through the drawers of the big Welsh dresser behind her. At last she found what she was looking for and brought it back to the table.
What she had in her hands was an antique half-hunter watch, Savonnette style, with a silver case and a silver chain, tarnished but still very beautiful. There was delicate filigree work on the case, and the silver bar that was meant to attach the watch to a waistcoat was not a bar at all but a tiny figure of the crucified Christ, his outstretched arms providing the necessary perpendicular line. It was an amazing piece of work: pair-cased, too, I discovered, as I automatically opened the front and discovered the actual watch nestling inside its bivalved shell. It had to be two hundred years old, and it had to be worth a small fortune.
I looked at Carla. ‘I can’t take this,’ I said.
‘It belonged to his dad, and he wanted you to have it,’ she answered, in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘It was one of the last things he said to me before – when he was still thinking straight. “If anything happens to me, give this to Fix.” So it’s not up to me, or you. It’s yours.’
I put it into one of the inside pockets of the paletot, bowing to the inevitable. ‘Thanks,’ I said lamely. ‘I’ll – well, I’ll think of John every time I look at it.’ Unpalatable though that prospect was right now.
‘Thanks for driving me home,’ Carla said.
‘It was my pleasure.’
And then the twist of the knife. ‘Fix, I hate to do this. You’ve been so kind already. But if John’s going to be dug up and then cremated, I’ve got to know where and when. And I hate that man so much. If it’s not too much to ask—’
And there it was. No good deed goes unpunished. Come to think of it, probably most of the people you see lying rolled and robbed on the side of the road are good Samaritans who stopped like idiots because they saw someone wringing their hands and looking helpless.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Yeah. Sure. I can check the details with him. Let you know.’ It was the minimum commitment that the situation seemed to call for. I tried not to sound too grudging as I gave it.
‘Oh, Fix. I’d be so grateful. You’re a sweet man. Thank you.’
She kissed me on the cheek and we hugged again, even more awkwardly than before.
As she walked me back through the living room I paused briefly, unfocused my eyes and strained my senses for the ghost. It was still there, a faint, unmoving presence like a stain on the air. Dormant. Dreaming.
‘The music should keep John quiet for a couple of days at least,’ I told Carla. ‘After that – well, see how you go. If he’s unhappy because you ignored his last request, then maybe after Todd’s done what he needs to do—’
‘Why does Pen have a room free?’ Carla demanded, derailing my thoughts.
‘Uh – because we had a bit of a falling out,’ I admitted.
‘You two? What could make you two row with each other?’
‘Rafi,’ I said, and she let the subject drop. Everybody always does. Conversationally, that one word is the ace of trumps.
3
If you come out of High Barnet Tube and head uphill along the Great North Road, you pass the Magistrates’ Court on the left, in between a bathroom supplies shop and an estate agent’s. Or you could stop right there and save yourself a little effort, because it’s not as though Barnet has anything more exciting saved up to show you.
It was the day after the night before, and the night before had involved all the many units of alcohol I’d failed to take in before the funeral. I felt fuzzy-headed and sticky-eyed as I walked in off the street, finding myself in a red-carpeted foyer where tasselled ropes barred off some directions, steered you in others. It was like a cinema, except that there didn’t seem to be anyone selling popcorn.
Nobody challenged me. There was a single usher on duty, but he was talking with strained patience to a belligerent young guy in a hooded jacket outside the door leading to court number one, and he didn’t even look round as I passed. I followed the arrows to courtroom three, where a sign said that the Honourable Mister Montague Runcie was presiding, and slid in quietly at the back. It looked like I’d only missed the warm-up. The magistrate, a man in his late fifties with a pinched, acerbic face and three concentric rings of wrinkles across his cheeks as though his eyes were wells that someone had just dropped a pebble into, was still examining papers and holding a muttered conversation with the court clerk. Pen was sitting right at the front with her back to me, as tense as all hell if the set of her shoulders was anything to go by. But she hadn’t started shouting yet so that was good.
I sat down in an empty seat at the back of the room. There were a lot of empty seats: this was the sort of case that could easily make the local papers, but it didn’t look like any of them had caught onto it yet. In the digital age, cub reporters don’t bird-dog the courts and the cop shops any more: they print out the press releases that come in over the wire, clock off early and spend more time abusing substances.
Eventually the magistrate looked up. He cast his gaze around the room, as if someone at the back had just spoken and he was trying to work out who so he could hand out some lines.
‘Miss Bruckner?’ he said, in a querulous tone. Pen got to her feet, holding up her hand unnecessarily. Her fall of red-gold hair made her hard to miss even when she was sitting down. As always she looked much taller than her five foot and half a spare inch: that effect is even more pronounced when you’re facing her, staring head-on at her scarily vivid green eyes, but it’s noticeable even from the back. Pen may be a small package, but what’s in there was tamped down with a lot of force and the lid stays just barely on most of the time.
‘And Professor Mulbridge?’
On the other side of the court, another woman who’d been scribbling notes in a ring-bound notebook looked up, flicked the book closed and stood. She was older than Pen, and she made a strong contrast to her in a lot of ways. Matt-grey hair – the same grey as Whistler’s mother’s, or a German helmet – in a well-sculpted bob; grey eyes flecked with the smallest hint of blue; an austere, thin-lipped face, but with a healthy blush to her cheeks that suggested a warm smile lurking there under the superficial solemnity. She was dressed in a formal, understated two-piece in shades of dark blue, looking like a probation officer or a Tory MP, whereas Pen was wearing flamboyant African silk. The older woman’s cool self-possession was clearly visible under the self-effacing smile and polite nod. Clearly visible to me, anyway: but then, I go back a long way with Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, and I know where most of the bodies are buried. Hell, in a few cases I even dug the graves. People who don’t know her so well are apt to take away from their first meeting a vague sense of heavy-handed maternal benevolence: and to be fair, if I were going to describe Jenna-Jane to someone who didn’t know her, ‘mother’ might well be the first couple of syllables I’d reach for.
‘Here, your honour,’ Jenna-Jane said mildly. Her voice said ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor’: and she is, as far as that goes. Then again, so were Crippen and Mengele, and they both sold patent medicines in their time.