Playing for the Ashes (58 page)

“He don’t need me,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, Jim, he does.”

“Not while he’s got his mum to look after him. I’n’t that the case?”

He spoke with a surly challenge in his voice, as if a hidden message existed in the statement and the subsequent question. Jeannie tried and failed to read the message. “Little boys need a man to look up to.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t expect to be round here much longer. So if Stan needs someone to wipe his nose and keep his hands off his dick when the lights go out, it ain’t going t’be me. Got it?” Jimmy leaned forward and
fli
cked ash into the lettuce leaf saucer beneath the carrot cup.

“Where you planning on going, then?”

“I don’t know. Somewheres. Anywheres. It don’t matter much so long as it’s not here. I hate this place. I’m that sick of it.”

“What about your family?”

“What about them? Huh?”

“With your dad gone—”

“Don’t talk about him. What’s it matter where that poncey bloke is? He was gone already, before he got the chop. He wasn’t never coming back. You think Stan and Shar expected him to show up on the porch one day, asking them could he please move home?” he barked and brought his cigarette to his mouth. His fingers were nicotine-stained yellow-orange. “You were the only one liked to think that, Mum. The rest of us, we knew Dad wasn’t coming back. And we knew about her. From the very first. We even met her. Only we all decided to never say about it because we didn’t want you to feel no worse.”

“You met Dad’s—”

“Yeah. We met her all right. Twice or three times. Four. I don’t know. With Dad looking at her and her looking at Dad and both of’m trying to act all innocent, calling each other
Mr
. Fleming and
Mrs
. Patten, like they wasn’t going to stick each other like pigs the minute we was gone.” He returned to his cigarette, puffing furiously. Jeannie could see that the cigarette shook.

“I didn’t know that,” she said. She moved away from the bed and went to the window.

She looked, unseeing, at the garden below. Her hand went to the curtains. Washing, she thought. They needed washing. “You should of told me, Jim.”

“Why? Would you of done something different?”

“Different?”

“Yeah. You know what I mean.”

Jeannie turned reluctantly from the window. “Different how?” she asked.

“You could of divorced him. You could of done that much for Stan.”

“For Stan?”

“He was four years old when Dad left, wasn’t he? He would of got over it. And when he did, he’d still have his mum. Why’n’t you think about that?” He knocked more ashes into the saucer. “You think things were cocked up proper before this, Mum. But they’re cocked up worse now.”

In the stuffy room, Jeannie felt a chill gust of air wash over her, as if a window had been opened somewhere nearby. “You best talk to me,” she told her son. “You best tell me the truth.”

Jimmy shook his head and smoked.

“Mummy?” Sharon had come to stand in the bedroom door.

“Not now,” Jeannie said. “I’m talking to your brother. You can see that, can’t you?”

The girl took a half step back. Behind her glasses, her eyes looked froggish, overlarge and bulging out like she might lose them altogether. When she didn’t leave, Jeannie bit out the words, “Did you hear me, Shar? Are you going deaf as well as blind? Go back to your tea.”

“I…” She looked over her shoulder in the direction of the stairway. “There’s…”

“Spit it out, Shar,” her brother said.

“Police,” she said. “At the door. For Jimmy.”

As soon as Lynley and Havers had climbed out of the Bentley, the reporters had leapt from their semi-recumbent positions against a Ford Escort. They waited only long enough to make certain Lynley and Havers were heading towards the Cooper-Fleming house. At that point, as if on automatic pilot, they had begun firing questions. They seemed to have no expectation of these questions being answered, merely a need to ask them, to get in the way, and thus to make the presence of the fourth estate felt.

“Any suspects?” one had shouted.

And another, “…located Mrs. Patten yet?”

And a third, “…in Mayfair with the keys on the seat. Will you confirm that for us?” as the cameras clicked and whirred.

Lynley had ignored them and had rung the doorbell as Havers observed the Nova down the street. “Our blokes are over there,” she said quietly, “playing it for intimidation, it looks like.”

Lynley saw them himself. “No doubt they’ve rattled a few nerves,” he remarked.

The door had swung open and they faced a young girl with thick spectacles on her nose, breadcrumbs at the corners of her mouth, and a scattering of spots on her chin. Lynley had shown his identification and asked to speak to Jimmy Fleming.

The girl had said, “Cooper, you mean. Jimmy? You want Jimmy?” and without waiting for a reply, she left them on the front step and thundered up the stairs.

They had let themselves inside, into a sitting room where a television featured a great white shark slamming its snout against the bars of a cage in which a hapless scuba diver floated, gesticulated, and photographed the creature. The sound was turned low. No one appeared to be watching. As they observed it in silence, a small boy’s voice said, “That’s like
Jaws
, that fish. I saw it on a video at my mate’s house once.”

Lynley saw that the boy was speaking from the kitchen where he’d scooted his chair out from the table in order to put it in line with the sitting room door. He was having his tea, swinging his feet against the chair legs and munching on a biscuit of some sort.

“You a detective?” he asked. “Like Spender? I used to see that on the telly.”

“Yes,” Lynley said. “Something like Spender. Are you Stan?”

The boy’s eyes widened, as if Lynley had displayed a preternatural knowledge that had to be reckoned with. “How’d you know that?”

“I saw a photograph of you. In your father’s bedroom.”

“At Mrs. Whitelaw’s house? Oh, I been there lots. She lets me wind her clocks. Except the one in the morning room doesn’t get wind. Did you know that? She said her grandfather stopped it the night Queen Victoria died and he never started it again.”

“Are you fond of clocks?”

“Not ’specially. But she’s got all sorts of thingummies in her house. All over the place. When I go there, she lets me—”

“That’ll do, Stan.” A woman stood on the stairs.

Havers said, “Ms. Cooper, this is Detective Inspector—”

“I don’t need his name.” She descended to the sitting room. She said without looking in his direction, “Stan, take your tea to your room.”

“But I’m not feeling grumbly,” he said anxiously.

“Do like I said. Now. And shut the door.”

He scrambled off his chair. He
fil
led his hands with sandwiches and biscuits. He scurried up the stairs. A door closed somewhere above.

Jean Cooper crossed the room and turned off the television where the great white shark was displaying what appeared to be half a dozen rows of jagged teeth. She took a packet of Embassys from the top of the set, lit one, and swung round to face them.

“What’s this?” she asked them.

“We’d like to talk to your son.”

“You were just doing that, weren’t you?”

“Your older son, Ms. Cooper.”

“And if he’s not home?”

“We know that he is.”

“I know my rights. I don’t have to let you see him. I c’n ring a solicitor if I want.”

“We don’t mind if you do that.”

She flipped a curt nod at Havers. “I told you everything, didn’t I? Yesterday.”

“Jimmy wasn’t home yesterday,” Havers said. “It’s a formality, Ms. Cooper. That’s all.”

“You didn’t ask to talk to Shar. Or Stan. Why’s Jimmy the only one you want?”

“He was supposed to go on a sailing trip with his father,” Lynley said. “He was supposed to leave with his father on Wednesday night. If the trip was formally cancelled or perhaps postponed, he may have spoken to his father. We’d like to talk to him about that.” He watched her roll the cigarette restlessly between her fingers before she took another drag on it. He added, “As Sergeant Havers said, it’s just a formality. We’re speaking to anyone who might know anything about your husband’s
fin
al hours.”

Jean Cooper flinched from his last statement, but it was just a blink of her eyes and a fractional shrinking away from the words. “It’s more than formality,” she said.

“You can stay while we talk to him,” Havers said. “Or you can phone for a solicitor. Either way, it’s your right since he’s under age.”

“You keep that in mind,” she said. “He’s sixteen years old. Sixteen. He’s a boy.”

“We know that,” Lynley said. “If you’ll fetch him for us.”

She said over her shoulder, “Jimmy. Best you talk to them, luv. Get it over with quick.”

The boy had obviously been listening at the top of the stairs, just out of sight. He came down slowly, his body slumped, his shoulders curved inward and his head cocked to one side.

He didn’t make eye contact with anyone. He ambled to the sofa and dropped onto it. His chin touched his chest and his legs stretched out before him. His position gave Lynley ample opportunity to examine his feet. He was wearing boots. Their soles bore a pattern identical to the cast Inspector Ardery had made in Kent, down to the misshapen bit of dog-tooth cornice.

Lynley introduced himself and Sergeant Havers. He took one of the armchairs of the three-piece suite. Havers took the other. Jean Cooper joined her son on the sofa. She scooped a metal ashtray from the coffee table and placed it on her knees.

“Need a fag?” she asked her son quietly.

He said, “Nah,” and flipped his hair away from his shoulders. She reached out as if to assist him with this, but then seemed to think better of the idea and pulled back her hand.

Lynley said, “You spoke to your father on Wednesday.”

Jimmy nodded, eyes still focussed somewhere between his knees and the
flo
or.

“What time was this?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Morning? Afternoon? Your flight to Greece was scheduled for the evening. He would have phoned before that.”

“Afternoon, I guess.”

“Close to lunch? Close to tea?”

“I took Stan to the dentist,” his mother said. “Dad must of phoned then, Jim. Round four o’clock or half past.”

“Does that seem right?” Lynley asked the boy. He rolled his shoulders in silent response. Lynley took it for affirmation. “What did your father say?”

Jimmy pulled at the thread that was unravelling the hem of his T-shirt. “Something to see to,” he said.

“What?”

“Dad said he had something to see to.” The boy’s answer was underscored with impatience.
Stupid pigs
was implied in the tone.

“That day?”

“Yeah.”

“And the trip?”

“What about it?”

Lynley asked the boy what had happened to their plans for the boat trip. Had they been postponed? Were they cancelled altogether?

Jimmy appeared to think this question over. At least that’s what Lynley took from the shifting of the boy’s eyes. He
fin
ally told them that his father had said the trip would have to be put off for a few days. He’d phone him in the morning, he said. They’d lay out new plans then.

“And when he didn’t phone you in the morning,” Lynley said, “what did you think?”

“Didn’t think nothing. That was Dad, wasn’t it? He said he was going to do lots of things that he never did. Boat trip was one of them. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to go in the first place, did I?” To emphasise his
fin
al question, he dug the heel of his boot into the beige carpet. It must have been something he did quite often, because the carpet was worn and sooty coloured where he was sitting.

“And what about Kent?” Lynley asked.

The boy gave a sharp tug to the thread on the hem of his shirt. It broke off. His
fin
gers sought another.

“You were out there on Wednesday night,” Lynley said. “At the cottage. We know you were in the garden. I’m wondering if you went in the house as well.”

Jean Cooper’s head shot up. She’d been in the act of tapping ash from her cigarette, but she stopped and reached for her son’s arm. He pulled away from her, saying nothing.

“Do you smoke Embassys like your mother, or were the cigarette ends we found at the bottom of the garden from some other brand?”

“What is this?” Jean demanded.

“The key from the potting shed’s gone missing as well,” Lynley said. “If we search your bedroom—or have you empty your pockets—will we find it, Jimmy?”