He heard a cry of “Oh my God” from somewhere. St. James flinched at this. His eyes, Lynley saw, were fixed upon him.
“What is it?” Lynley asked. “What’s happened, Simon?”
“You must come with me, Tommy,” St. James said. “Helen’s…” Then he faltered.
Lynley would always remember that-that his old friend faltered when it came to the moment-and he would always remember what the faltering meant: about their friendship and about the woman whom both of them had loved for years.
“She’s been taken to St. Thomas’ Hospital,” St. James said. His eyes reddened at the rims, and he cleared his throat harshly. “Tommy, you must come with me at once.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
OUTSIDE BERKELEY PEARS’ FLAT, BARBARA HAVERS CONSIDERED her next move. It appeared to be a nice little visit with Barry Minshall in the Holmes Street station to see what else she could scoop out of the cesspool that was his brain.
She was heading off to do just that, making her way along the corridor towards the stairs, when she heard the sound. It was something between a howl and the cry of someone in the throes of death by strangulation, and it stopped Barbara in her tracks. She waited to hear if the cry would repeat itself, and in due course it did. Throaty, desperate…It took a moment for her to realise that she was listening to a cat.
“Bloody hell,” she murmured. It had sounded exactly like…She attached the sound to the shriek that someone in the building had heard the night of Davey Benton’s murder, and when she made that leap, she realised that everything about her journey to Walden Lodge might well have been an exercise in pure futility.
The cat cried again. Barbara knew little enough about felines, but it sounded like one of those cracked-voice Siamese types. Malevolent little furballs though they were, they still had a right-
Furballs. Barbara looked towards the door behind which the cat sounded another time. Cat fur, she thought, cat hair, whatever the bloody hell it was. There’d been cat hair on Davey Benton’s body.
She went in search of the building manager. A question to one of the Moppits directed her to a ground-floor flat. She knocked on the door.
After a moment, a woman’s voice called out, “Who is it, please?” in a tone that suggested she’d opened the door more than once to an unexpected visitor.
Barbara identified herself. Several locks were disengaged and the building manager stood before her: Morag McDermott, she was called. What did the police want this time round because God only knew she’d told them everything she could think of last time they’d come seeking information about “that dreadful nasty business in the woods.”
Barbara saw she’d interrupted Morag McDermott in the midst of an afternoon snooze. Despite the time of year, she wore a thin dressing gown through which her skeletal body showed, and her hair was pancaked on one side. The unmistakable pattern of a chenille counterpane had lumped her cheeks like facial cellulite.
She added sharply, “How on earth did you get into the building? Let me see your identification at once.”
Barbara fished it out and explained the situation with the front door and the Moppits. In response to this, the building manager pulled a sticky pad from a tabletop nearby and scribbled furiously upon it. Barbara took this as invitation to enter, and she did so as Morag McDermott slapped her note onto the wall next to the door. This was already aflutter with two score similar notes. The wall resembled a prayer board in a church.
It was for her monthly report to the management firm, Morag informed Barbara as she replaced the little yellow pad in a drawer. Now, if the constable would step this way, into the sitting room…
She made it sound as if the room in question required directions to get to when in fact it was less than five feet from the front door. The flat’s floor plan was identical to that of Berkeley Pears but reversed so that it faced not the woods but the street. Its decor, however, was utterly dissimilar to the flat Barbara had been in earlier. Where Berkeley Pears would have passed a drill sergeant’s inspection, Morag was a poster child for clutter and sheer bad taste. Mostly, this was due to horses, of which there were hundreds on display, on every surface, in all sizes, and of all possible composition: from plastic to rubber. She was National Velvet gone berserk.
Barbara edged her way past a tea stand of Lippizaners poised to perform their airs above the ground. She trod the sole path available into the room, which led to a sofa burdened with perhaps a dozen equine cushions. There she deposited herself. She’d begun to perspire, and she understood why the building manager was wearing so thin a dressing gown in the middle of winter. It felt like a Jamaican summer in the flat, and it smelled as if the place hadn’t been aired since the day of Morag’s advent in the building.
Cutting to the chase was the best option for personal survival, Barbara concluded, so she went directly to the subject of the cat. She’d been about to leave the building, she said, when she’d heard the sound of an animal in distress. She wondered if Morag ought to know about that. It certainly sounded-to her admittedly unschooled ears since she’d never owned anything more than a gerbil-serious. A Siamese cat perhaps, she added helpfully. This would be in flat number 5.
“That’s Mandy,” Morag McDermott told her promptly. “Esther’s cat. She’s on holiday. I mean Esther, of course, not the cat. She’ll quiet soon enough when Esther’s boy comes to feed her. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
Worry for the animal was the last thing on Barbara’s mind, but she went with the flow of the conversation. She needed to get inside that flat, and she didn’t want to wait for a warrant to do it. Mandy sounded dead frantic, she told the building manager solemnly. True, she didn’t know much about felines, but she thought the situation wanted checking into. And by the way, Berkeley Pears had told her that cats weren’t allowed in the building. Had he been playing fast and loose with the truth?
“That man will say anything,” Morag replied. “Of course cats are allowed in the building. Cats, fish, and birds.”
“But not dogs?”
“He knew that before he moved in, Constable.”
Barbara nodded. Yes, well, people and their animals…It took all kinds, didn’t it? She brought Morag round to flat number 5 once again. “This cat…Mandy? She sounds…well, is there any chance the son hasn’t come round to feed her for a while? Have you seen him here? Entering or leaving?”
Morag thought about this, drawing the neck of her dressing gown more tightly closed at her throat. She admitted that she hadn’t exactly seen the son in the vicinity lately, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there. He was completely devoted to his mum. Everyone should have such a son.
Nonetheless…Barbara offered a smile she hoped was ingratiating. Perhaps they ought to have a look…? For the sake of the cat? Something could have happened to prevent the son from coming round, couldn’t it? Car crash, heart attack, kidnap by aliens…?
At least one of Barbara’s suggestions seemed to work because Morag nodded thoughtfully and said, “Yes, perhaps we ought to see…” before she went over to a corner cupboard and opened it to reveal the back of its door covered with hooks from which keys dangled.
Still attired in her dressing gown, Morag led the way to flat number 5. There was silence behind the door and for a moment Barbara thought that her ruse to get inside was going to fail. But as Morag said, “I don’t actually hear-” Mandy howled cooperatively once more. With an “Oh, my dear,” the building manager hastily unlocked the door and opened it. The cat escaped like a lag given an unexpected opportunity. She melted round the corner of the corridor, going for the stairs and doubtless heading for the freedom of the front door, which the Moppits still had propped open.