Gone to Ground (28 page)

"Ms. Scarman."

She heard Raymond James's voice before she saw him.

"Mr. James." She held out her hand, which he studiously ignored.

"You're not planning to make any kind of a fuss?"

Lesley treated him to her best smile. "Perish the thought."

"Perish, indeed."

He stared at her a moment longer, then moved away.

"Who was that?" Jerry asked, appearing at her side.

"The devil, probably. Or his assistant."

Before Jerry could ask for clarification, James had called the assembly to attention and introduced Howard Prince, who had entered without Lesley noticing, and, at his side, the project's architect, Carl Richter.

In the flesh, Prince looked, if anything, younger than his photographs suggested; more stylish, too, Lesley thought, though to her eyes, the suit he was wearing, which had cost however many hundred pounds, did little to disguise the rough and ready man underneath.

"There are people," Prince began, "maybe some of you here, who think men like me and my colleagues here are only interested in one thing above all else. And that's money." He held his pause, surveying the room. "Well, let me tell you, that's too fucking right."

Laughter all round; broad grins from among the suits.

"But let me say this too, that's not all we're interested in. What we are interested in, what we care about—what I care about—is this city. And the people who live in it. And when I die—oh, yes, I know it's a long way off, it bloody better be—but when I die I don't want people to say he knocked down shit and he put shit up in its place. A selfish, greedy bastard to boot. I want them to say, he built places to last, places with style where people liked to live. I want them to say, while he was here, he did this city proud."

Murmurs of affirmation and a smattering of applause. Only one muffled comment of dissent from behind where Lesley was standing.

"And this building," Prince went on, "which Carl has designed, is one that should make us all very proud indeed."

Richter came forward and, after acknowledging the applause with a small bow, spoke in an over-precise Swiss-German accent of his ambition to create something which was sympathetic to the building's riverside setting, echoing its fluidity with a sense of space and light.

He lost Lesley for a while when he talked about the plasticity of materials and the aesthetic context of landscape, but rallied when he concluded by drawing a comparison between his design and that of an ocean liner.

"Let's hope it's not the
Titanic,
" Jerry whispered in her ear.

Rounding off the speeches, the leader of the City Council's urban design team congratulated everyone involved in the project, hailing it as a fine example of the kind of high-quality, exemplary development that was making the city's regeneration the envy not just of the rest of the country, but of the whole of Europe.

"Why not the world while he's about it?" Jerry hissed.

But Lesley had become of aware of Raymond James leaning toward Howard Prince and the pair of them looking in her direction. After which James stepped onto the platform and fielded questions, most of which were positive and friendly, save for one young man at the rear of the room, who wanted to know, in the light of similar unkept promises in the past, what assurances there were that the promised leisure centre would remain part of the project.

James began to answer this urbanely himself, but Prince pushed him aside, fixing the questioner with an outstretched finger and a glare.

"You want to know what assurances? I'll tell you what assurances. My fuckin' word."

"And I think," James said, composure regained, "we can safely leave things there. Thank you all for your time."

"Well," Jerry said, "back to the grind."

"You go ahead," Lesley replied. "Someone I want to see."

"Suit yourself."

She could see Prince speaking to Richter, patting him on the shoulder, shaking his hand. When he turned and began to walk away, she moved to intercept him.

"Mr. Prince. I wonder if I could have a word?"

"About what?"

"My brother."

Prince's eyes narrowed. "Your brother died, Miss Scarman, and I'm sorry. Did they catch whoever did it?"

"Not yet."

"Well, I'm sorry about that too. Now if you'll excuse me..."

Instead of moving, Lesley stood her ground. "There were questions Stephen wanted to ask you, about a book he was writing. Background, really."

"I told him. I've got nothing to say."

"I know. I thought perhaps you might talk to me instead."

Prince's hand reached out and enclosed her wrist. "Don't make the mistake your brother made."

His breath, a mixture of wine and tobacco, was warm on her face.

"What was that?" Lesley said.

"I expect there were several. Not taking no for an answer was one."

He snatched his hand away, pushed through a knot of lingering visitors and was gone. Lesley waited until her own breathing had steadied and, under Raymond James's interested gaze, headed for the door. The impressions left by Prince's fingers and thumb were clear on her wrist, and by the time she arrived back at work, the bruises had started to show through the skin.

EARLIER THAT MORNING, CAREFUL AND SLOW, HELEN had had her second unassisted shower since the operation, the nurse checking halfway through that she was still okay, and that afternoon there was another session with the physio.

Back at work before you know it, the young doctor had joked.

Before she knew it, Helen realized, she could have died. All it took: a single second, the flicker of an eye. Another twist of the knife.

After her shower, she had rested on her bed and then, bored, she had managed to walk the length of the ward and out into the broad corridor by the lifts, which was where she now stood, leaning up against the wall and staring down through smudged glass toward the car park below. People scurrying to and fro, some bearing gifts, others glancing at their watches then quickening their pace, already late. Still leading normal hurried lives. The quick and the dead? Was that the phrase? Some left, some stayed behind. Slid, unknowing, into a sleep, natural or drug induced, anesthetized, from which they didn't wake up.

No clamour, nothing dramatic, no fuss.

One moment you were there and then you were not.

That, Helen thought, was what frightened her most. That you could take a breath then disappear.

And who would know or care? Her parents, certainly, her sister, a handful of colleagues, possibly a few friends from school. And Will.

Some burial that would be, she thought. Some fucking funeral there. The only people she cared for or who cared for her?

Angry, Helen shook her head. Angry with herself. Snap out of it, for fuck's sake, you maudlin cow! Feeling sorry for yourself for being alive. How pathetic, how stupid is that?

When she made her way back to the bed, she was surprised to see Lesley there, waiting. Some grapes, a box of chocolates, a bunch of daffodils. "I didn't know what to bring."

"So you thought you'd bring a bit of everything."

"Something like that."

For a few awkward moments, neither spoke.

"The nurse wasn't sure where you were. She thought you might be in the loo."

"No, I was..." Helen glanced back over her shoulder. "It gets you down, stuck here all the time. I go for a little wander when I can."

"I wanted to come before. When I heard what had happened. It's just, you know, work and..."

"I understand."

"I spoke to Inspector Grayson. On the phone. Asked him how you were."

"Yes. I think he said."

"Everything's okay?"

Helen smiled. "Good as new."

"Good."

"There'll be a scar."

"You look great."

"Not really."

"Yes. Yes, you do."

Seeing Lesley, the same age as herself, more or less, standing there fresh in her blue cotton jacket, cream top, and black tapered trousers, Helen felt like shit.

"There was something I wanted to talk to you about," Lesley said. "But only if you feel up to it. I..."

"About your brother?"

"Yes. Sort of."

"Something's happened?"

"Not exactly."

Helen pulled open the narrow drawer at the top of the bedside cabinet and reached toward the back. "I have to keep hiding these." She eased a packet of cigarettes and a lighter down into the pocket of her dressing gown. "If you don't mind giving me a bit of help, we could go outside, pollute the fresh air."

Down below, Helen found a bench out of sight of the no-smoking sign before lighting up. "You should've nipped into the shop," she suggested. "Bought yourself a Twix."

Lesley smiled and shook her head.

"Whatever it is," Helen said, "you can tell me now."

As succinctly as she could, Lesley told her about her attempts to question Howard Prince, including the visit to his house in the Fens; about the manner in which she'd been warned off at work, and her fears about being followed, her certainty that her flat had been searched.

"Looking for what?" Helen asked.

"I don't know."

"But, whatever it was, you think, in some way, Howard Prince was behind it?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

Helen leaned forward. "Tell me again what he said. The other day."

"He said, 'Don't make the mistake your brother made.'"

"What did you think he meant by that?"

"That's what I asked him."

"And?"

"And he said, 'I expect there were several.' And then, 'Not taking no for an answer was one.'"

"And you thought he was referring to the book your brother wanted to write."

"What else? What else is there?"

Helen released a coil of smoke out on to the air. "Prince—what sort of an accent would you say he has?"

"I don't know. Local, I suppose."

"Local to where? Here or..."

"No. Nottingham."

"East Midlands, then?"

"Yes, why?"

Helen tapped ash from the end of her cigarette. "There was a message on your brother's answer phone."

"When?"

"A few days before he died."

Lesley's face went pale. "How do you know?"

"Someone your brother knew, someone he'd met, he heard the message and reported it to us. Part of it anyway. The part he heard."

"Someone? What do you mean, someone? Who?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it does."

"No, really. Believe me, it doesn't matter."

"The message, then, what was it?"

'"You better believe what I say.'"

"That's it? That's all?"

"That's all he heard."

Lesley looked across to where an elderly woman with wisps of thinning gray hair was being lifted from an ambulance car by a paramedic and lowered into a wheelchair. "You think it might have been Prince," she said. "The message."

"I don't know."

"But that's why you asked? About the accent?"

"Yes."

"And that's what it was? East Midlands? Nottingham?"

"As far as we know. But we've only one person's word."

Lesley arched her back and closed her eyes. For a moment she saw Stephen's body, the technician slowly folding back the sheet.

"Can't you question Prince about it?" she said. "He'd have to speak to you."

Helen stubbed the remnant of her cigarette out against the underside of the bench and dropped it to the ground. "If we confront him with what he said to you, all he needs to do is deny it, and then we've got nowhere to go."

A flash of anger showed on Lesley's face. "So that's it? You're just going to leave it at that?"

"No. Not at all. I'll talk to Will, as soon as I can."

"But, then, if as you say..."

"When we asked Prince his reasons for trying to stop your brother writing his book, refusing to give him access for his research, the only one he gave was wanting to protect his wife and prevent her from getting upset."

"And now you think it might be more than that?"

Cautiously, Helen started to get to her feet. "Skeletons in the cupboard? Who knows? Nothing to stop us digging around."

"I can send you a few bits and pieces I've put together. Just background, mostly downloaded from the Net."

"All right, thanks. That would help."

Lesley held out her hand. "Take care."

"You, too."

"You want me to walk you back to the ward?"

"No, it's okay. I'll be fine."

Lesley smiled and turned, and Helen watched her walk away. One more cigarette, she thought, before I go inside.

***

How long the letter had been there, Helen didn't know. But there it was on her bedside table, propped up between the things Lesley had brought. Stamped, addressed: she didn't have to open it to know who it was from.

When she'd first known him, the first months, before anything had really happened between them, he had written all the time. Sometimes just a note, a card; sometimes a long ambling account of somewhere he'd been, something he'd seen. Only two weeks after they'd met, he had gone off on a trip to the States—Washington DC, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Minneapolis-St. Paul.

He. Andrew. She didn't even like to say his name.

She had met him at the airport on his return and less than a month later they had moved in together. Rather, she had moved in with him. A flat in Camden, sublet to Andrew by a friend of a friend. Not that he was there all the time: his line of work, a lot of traveling.

She was twenty-five and still in uniform. Old enough to have known better. It was a while before she acknowledged his drinking was a problem, still longer before she challenged him about all the pills he was taking. When she fell pregnant, he persuaded her it was the wrong time; she was pushing for promotion to CID, wasn't she, and this next year or so he was likely to be busy, busier than ever. Plenty of time for kids later on.

Less than a month after the abortion, the woman came to the door. Pale, thin-faced, a sketch of prettiness with most of the lines erased; at first glance Helen had thought she was just a girl, but then realized she was wrong. When the sides of the fawn raincoat she was wearing fell aside, Helen could see the child she was carrying clearly. Six months or seven.