Chapter 33

IN THE COURSE of her work Natalie had often thought of how she would handle the press should a journalist contact her. The advice she gave herself was much the same as that offered by a lawyer to his or her client in confrontations with the police. Say nothing, or, if you must speak, use monosyllables. Like most reporters and most policemen, she seldom encountered members of the public who took this advice. Nell Johnson-Fleet was the exception.

Opening the door of her Kentish Town flat, she looked straight into Natalie’s face but said nothing. Natalie, who was looking straight into hers, said who she was and might she have a word.

“No,” said Nell Johnson-Fleet.

Like all Jeff’s women—Zillah had been the odd one out—she was a tallish, thin blonde and dressed as he liked them to be, in trousers and a sweater. Natalie well remembered his preferences. “I was one of his girlfriends too. Victims, if you like. It might be a help to talk about it, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you prefer to put it all behind you? Try to do the impossible and forget it ever happened.”

Gently, Nell Johnson-Fleet closed the door. Natalie wasn’t one to give up as easily as that. She rang the bell again and, getting no answer, went round the corner of the street, where she sat down on a wall and dialed the woman’s number on her mobile. The call was answered with a curt, “Yes?”

This, at least, was different. “It’s Natalie Reckman, Nell. I hope you’re going to let me in for just five minutes.”

“No,” and the phone went down.

You had to admire it, Natalie thought, returning to her car just as the traffic warden was approaching. It was a wonderful technique. A good thing most of the public weren’t like that. On the other hand, people went through moods, they had good days and bad days, and this might be a bad one. Nell Johnson-Fleet might have had a row with her boyfriend or seen him with another woman; the way she happened to be this evening was no guide to her normal behavior. She’d try again tomorrow, give her a chance to regret passing up her opportunity. Now for Kensal Green.

The police had left them alone for nearly two weeks. They had threatened to come back but they never had. Michelle had begun eating again, not much and sensible food, but she no longer felt as if every mouthful would choke her. Her weight had gone down to what it had been ten years earlier. And while she was quite content with a salad and single slice of bread for lunch, Matthew was regularly eating a two-egg omelette. He’d begun to drive the car again, uncertainly at first, like someone who has just passed his test, but with increasing confidence. When they hadn’t seen or heard from the police for long enough to feel safe, they did something they hadn’t done since they were first married. They went away together for the weekend.

For the first time since she’d known her, Michelle fancied she saw envy of her in Fiona’s eyes. This didn’t please her, it was the last thing she wanted to excite in anyone, but she noted it because it was so unusual.

Fiona envied her for having a husband who loved her and wanted to be alone with her in a hotel in the countryside. “I hope you’ll have a lovely time,” she said. “You deserve it.”

They did. But the lovely time was very different from what Fiona (and anyone else who saw them and thought about it) envisaged, imagining gentle walks, quiet drinks in little pubs, a visit to a beauty spot, and perhaps some candlelit dining. It was much more like a honeymoon. In Matthew’s arms, having a late lie-in, Michelle went back in time to their early days and felt no older than she had seventeen years before in the first bliss of their passion.

The Kentish Town block of flats had been grim in Natalie’s estimation but had nothing on Syringa Road, Kensal Green. That, she decided, parking her car without difficulty in this nonrestricted zone, must be the seat on which Eileen Dring had been killed. Or a replacement seat, surely. It looked new. The flower bed behind it had been dug up and now showed a healthy growth of young weeds. Something of a coincidence, she thought, that one of the murder victims had died within a stone’s throw of where the other victim’s girlfriend—or one of them—lived.

Two rows of squat Victorian houses, with mostly neglected and very small front gardens, some of them packed full of bicycles, pushchairs, the occasional motorbike, rolls of wire netting, and pieces of broken furniture. Disproportionately large bay windows jutted out downstairs, and dusty plaques under their eaves were engraved with names such as Theobald Villa and Salisbury Terrace. One house only had been smartened up and to an extent that offended Natalie’s taste. This was number 37, whose front had been refaced with blocks of (probably fake) gray granite, whose paintwork was white and front door a deep rose pink. Multicolored dahlias and dark blue Michaelmas daisies filled the garden. Next door, Natalie’s goal, was neat but dowdy, the garden paved over, the paintwork worn though clean. Jeff must have been on his uppers to come looking for succor down here, she thought. And then she recalled the leaps-and-bounds increases in London house prices, that this place was not so very far from fashionable Notting Hill and a tube stop on the Bakerloo Line was just a little way down Harrow Road. If he could have got his hands on a house here . . .

She rang the bell. A woman came to the door and stared at her. It wasn’t a stare like Nell Johnson-Fleet’s and she wasn’t at all like Nell Johnson-Fleet, not Jeff’s type except insofar as she was fair and thin. A little wispy woman, very white-skinned with pale, no-color eyes, thin lips, hair like a baby’s. But what startled Natalie, what almost frightened her, was that she looked mad. Natalie would never have used this politically incorrect word except to herself, in her own thoughts. No other really described Araminta Knox’s wide stare, her large pupils, the tiny smile that came and went.

“Ms. Knox?”

A nod and the smile flickering.

“I’m called Natalie Reckman and I’m a freelance journalist. I wonder if I might talk to you about Jeff Leach.”

“Who?”

She plainly didn’t know what Natalie meant. There had been not the faintest flicker of alarm or memory or pain or anger in those glassy eyes. And there would have been, for this was the sort of woman unable to conceal what she felt, unaware, showing every nuance of emotion in her expression. She’d either come to the wrong place, got the wrong woman, or Jeff had used one of his not very subtle aliases. “Jerry perhaps? Jed? Jake?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You didn’t have a boyfriend who was murdered in a cinema?” Natalie never minded what she said to anyone. She couldn’t, not in her job. “Jeff Leach or Leigh?”

“My fiancé died in the Paddington train crash,” said Minty and shut the door much more sharply than Nell Johnson-Fleet had.

It was possible she was on the wrong track. Natalie remembered that she’d assumed this was the right woman only because Jeff had said she lived near Kensal Green Cemetery and had called her Polo. Polo was a mint and the one person in the whole area with the right kind of name was Araminta Knox. But he might have called her Polo for any number of other reasons. Because she liked those mints he ate, for instance, or even played polo. Just the same, she rang the bell of the gaudy house with the pink front door.

The occupant was a big, handsome woman in a tight black skirt and scarlet shirt, technically black but in fact almond-colored with a Roman nose and full lips. Natalie said who she was and what she wanted.

“Would you mind telling me your name?”

“Sonovia Wilson. You can call me Mrs. Wilson.”

“Have you ever heard of a Jeffrey or Jeff or Jerry Leach or Leigh?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Well, I thought he’d been your neighbor’s boyfriend.”

“She’s only had one and he was called Jock Lewis. Or so he said. He said, or someone did, that he died in that train crash, but he never did and I know that for a fact. What d’you want him for?”

“I don’t want him, Mrs. Wilson. It wouldn’t be much use if I did, seeing he’s most likely the Jeffrey Leach who was murdered in the Marble Arch Odeon. J. L., you see, it was always J-something and L-something with him. May I come in?”

“You’d better talk to my husband. He’s in the force.”

In a quandary, Laf didn’t know what to do next. What to do at all, come to that. He and Sonovia watched Natalie Reckman cross the road and get into her car.

“It’s only what she thinks,” Laf said. “We’ve known since the beginning Jock Lewis wasn’t killed in that train crash. The only evidence she’s got for thinking Minty’s friend was this Jeffrey Leach is that they’ve got the same initials.”

“Well, not really, Laf. She seems to know Leach had a girlfriend who lived round here that he called Polo.”

“Jock Lewis never called Minty Polo, so far as I know.”

“We could ask her,” said Sonovia. “I mean, I could. I could say something casual, like ‘Didn’t you tell me Jock was fond of Polo mints?’ or get the conversation on to pet names and ask if he had one for her. And then, if she came out with it, I’d tell her. I mean, she ought to know, Laf, you’ve got to admit it.”

Laf turned away from the window, sat down in an armchair, and motioned Sonovia to another, with the masterful gesture and wearing the steady frown he used only on the very rare occasions when he thought his wife had worn the trousers long enough. “No, I’ve not got to admit it, Sonovia.” He called her by her full name only in his severer moments. “You’re not to say a word to Minty. Is that understood? This is one of those times when we’ve got to heed Daniel. You remember what he said? It was the last time you asked if she should be told about Jock. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t.’ You told me yourself what he said. Now when our son became a doctor of medicine I made up my mind I’d take his word on medical matters like I take Holy Writ. And you’ve got to do the same, right?”

Meekly, Sonovia said, “Right, Laf.”

Dressing to go out on her fifth date with Ronnie Grasmere, Zillah thought it was the babysitter when the doorbell rang. She zipped up her new black dress—tight but not too tight, low-cut, flattering—slipped her feet into her Jimmy Choo shoes, and ran downstairs. Two men were on the doorstep. Even if one of them hadn’t been in uniform she’d have known they were police officers—she could detect them from a distance now. Immediately, with a lurch in her Lycra-controlled stomach, she concluded that they were here to arrest her for bigamy.

“Mrs. Melcombe-Smith?”

One thing that phony marriage had done for her: everyone assumed it had been genuine. “What is it?”

“South Wessex Police. May we come in?”

They’d found Jerry’s car. The boneshaker. The twenty-year-old Ford Anglia. That was all it was about, his old banger. In Harold Hill.

“Where?” said Zillah.

“It’s a place in Essex near Romford. The car was parked by the side of a road in a residential area where there are no parking restrictions. A resident called us to complain about it. He said it was an eyesore.”

Zillah laughed. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Well, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith, we thought you might know how it came to be put there.”

“I don’t know but if you want my opinion, Jerry—I mean, Jeffrey— dumped it there because at last he’d found a woman with a nice car who’d let him have unlimited use of it. For the first time in his life, probably.”

They exchanged glances. “He didn’t have any particular associations with Harold Hill?”

Eugenie had come into the room. “Who’s Harold Hill, Mummy?”

“It’s a place, not a person.” Zillah said to the policeman who’d asked, “He never mentioned it to me. I should think he just used it as a rubbish dump. He was like that.”

“Who was like that?” Eugenie asked after they’d gone and the babysitter had come. “Who used a place as a rubbish dump?”

“Just a man,” said Zillah.

Neither child had once referred to their father after Eugenie first asked and got no reply. Accomplished at putting off unpleasant things until tomorrow or next week, Zillah sometimes wondered if she would ever need to tell them any more. Or did Eugenie already know from the newspapers, from gossip, from words overheard? If she did, had she told Jordan? Zillah certainly wasn’t going to say anything in front of the babysitter, a woman who hadn’t yet got above herself as Mrs. Peacock had. This time, when the doorbell rang, it was Ronnie Grasmere.

“I don’t like him very much,” said Eugenie as Zillah got up to let him in. “You’re not going to marry him as well, are you?”

Minty didn’t think much about the woman who’d called once she was gone. Maybe she’d been from the police and knew Minty went to the cinema a lot. She hadn’t noticed that the woman had gone next door and she went to call on Laf and Sonovia herself to ask about the shower man. Although they’d been out in the garden, having a glass of wine and a late snack, they’d heard the bell. Laf plied her with Chilean chardonnay and Duchy Original ginger biscuits, and seated her in one of their white patio chairs—the fourth one was occupied by Mr. Kroot’s old cat—but she thought they’d given her funny looks. She asked Sonovia about the shower man and Sonovia said he’d promised her to come at the beginning of next week.

“When it’s builders,” said Laf, “the beginning of the week is Thursday morning and the end of the week is next Monday.”

Sonovia laughed but Minty didn’t like it much. Jock had been a builder and Laf ought to have remembered. Still, she told them about her search for his grave. They might have some advice.

“What makes you think he’s in Brompton?” Sonovia asked in the kind of smiley way she talked to her four-year-old granddaughter.

“I had a feeling. Not voices telling me, it wasn’t that. I just knew.”

“But you didn’t know, my deah. You just thought. I don’t trust these feelings. It’s the same with premonitions. Nine times out of ten what you’ve felt isn’t true at all.” Laf gave Sonovia a warning cough but she went on just the same. “You have to find out these things for sure. With certificates and—and things.”

Minty looked helplessly at Laf. “Will you do it for me?”

He sighed but said in a hearty voice, “Of course I will, you leave it to me.”

“What does she mean, not voices telling me?” Sonovia said when Laf had seen Minty out. “She really is going crazy, she’s worse than ever.”

Unhappily, Laf shook his head, then nodded. “It’ll be easy finding out where Jeffrey Leach is buried, it’s done in five minutes, but do I want to, Sonn? I mean, what am I going to tell her? ‘Oh, yes, he’s up in Highgate or whatever but he wasn’t really Jock, he was the one murdered in the cinema and his name was Leach’? As I’ve said, that I won’t do.”

“You’ll just have to pass it off.”

“That’s what you always say but it’s not so easy. She’ll ask me again, won’t she?” And then, he thought, but didn’t say aloud, Am I going to say anything to the DI? I mean, the guy was stabbed, murdered, and she’d been his girlfriend, she’d been, or thought she’d been, engaged to him. But she’s my neighbor, she’s my friend, I can’t do that to her. She’s not right in the head but as for murder, well, she’d no more do murder than I would. He shivered.

“Not cold, are you?”

“I’m getting that way. And the mosquitoes are coming out.”

Sonovia gathered the sleeping cat up in her arms. “Dear God, I’ve forgotten to tell you. Mr. Kroot’s dead. He passed away this morning. It went straight out of my head. Picking up the cat reminded me.”

“Poor old boy.” Charitable Laf looked doleful. “I dare say he’s better off where he is. Keep Blackie, shall we?”

“I wouldn’t leave him to the tender mercies of Gertrude Pierce.”

When Minty had let herself into it, her own house had a ghostly feel. Perhaps any empty house is like that at dusk, until the lights are on, the curtains are closed, or laughter breaks through. No laughter but such silence, such stillness, such a sense of waiting for things to happen. The house is holding its breath, bracing itself for what will come in.

Instead of switching the hall light on, any light on, Minty walked slowly about, challenging the house to show its ghosts. She was a little afraid to turn round but she did, walking back the way she had come, going round and round. At the foot of the stairs she looked up them, as up a well by night, for there was no light at the top. Out of the deep shade Jock came down. He was just the same ghost as he’d been when she first saw him. It was as if she’d never got rid of him. It only worked for a little while. For three or four months, she thought, as she met his pale, stony eyes.

She closed her own eyes and slowly turned round so that her back was toward him. There was absolute silence. If he touched her, his hand on her neck or his breath cold against her cheek, she thought she would die. Nothing happened and she turned round again, forcing her eyes open as if strength were needed to push the eyelids up. No one was there, he had gone. From outside came the sound of a car moving along the street, its windows open and rock music thudding out. She thought, He comes back because I can’t find his grave, because I can’t put flowers on it like I do on Auntie’s.

“Now listen, Minty,” Laf said when he’d brought round the papers. “I’ve done that bit of detective work you wanted. Your Jock wasn’t buried. He was cremated and his ashes scattered.” Up to a point, this was true. Laf always tried very hard not to tell lies, only straying from the straight and narrow path when the truth was too cruel. For instance, Jeffrey Leach had indeed been cremated but his ashes had been collected from the undertakers by Fiona Harrington, who had told a police officer acquaintance of Laf’s what she intended to do with them. “Somewhere in West Hampstead,” he said, and was disappointed to see Minty’s face fall.

“Where could I put my flowers?”

Laf had a picture of a cellophane-wrapped bunch of chrysanthemums lying isolated and forlorn on the pavement in West End Lane. It would be as if someone had died there. Though he wasn’t usually so cynical on the subject of human nature, he wondered how long it would be before a dozen other similarly wrapped bouquets joined it, the “mourners” having no idea to whom they were paying homage.

“Well, Fortune Green was what she said.”

A sort of green triangle with trees, he thought vaguely. He expected more requests or even demands from Minty but when one came it was very different from what he anticipated.

“Will you get Sonovia to phone the builders again?”

“Give them time, Minty,” he said, rather taken aback.

She seemed to be listening for something as she stared into a corner. Then she shook herself like someone coming out of a daze. “You said the beginning of the week is Thursday and the end of the week next Monday but Monday’s gone and they haven’t come. I’m never going to get my shower at this rate.”