This Body of Death (20 page)

“Now. Yes, yes, yes?” he sang out happily once his customer went on her way with her cigarillos. “How may I help? Cigars? Cigarillos? Tobacco? Snuff? What will it be?”

“Conversation,” Isabelle told him. “Police,” she added and showed her ID. Lynley did likewise.

“I’m all agog,” the young man said. He gave his name as J-a-y-s-o-n Druther. His father, he revealed, was the owner of the shop. As had been his grandfather and his grandfather’s father before him. “What we don’t know about tobacco isn’t worth knowing.” He himself was just beginning in the business, having insisted on taking a degree in marketing before he “joined the ranks of those who labour.” He wished to expand, but his father disagreed. “Heaven forbid that we should invest in something not an absolute certainty,” he added with a dramatic shudder. “Now …” He spread his hands—they were white and smooth, Isabelle noted, very likely the objects of weekly manicures—and he indicated he was ready for whatever they asked of him. Lynley stood slightly behind her, which allowed her to do the honours. She liked this.

“Jemima Hastings,” she began. “I expect you know her, don’t you?”

“Rather.” J-a-y-s-o-n extended the word into
raw
and
thur
, and he gave emphasis to the second syllable. He said he wouldn’t mind having a word with dear Jemima, as she was the reason he was having to work “all sorts of mad hours just now. Where
is
the wretched minx, by the way?”

The wretched minx was dead, Isabelle told him.

His jaw dropped open. His jaw snapped shut. “Good
God
,” he said. “Not a road accident? She wasn’t hit by a car? Heavens, there’s not been another terrorist attack, has there?”

“She’s been murdered, Mr. Druther,” Lynley said quietly. Jayson clocked his highbrow accent and fingered an earlobe in response.

“In Abney Park Cemetery,” Isabelle added. “The papers have indicated a murder there. Do you read the papers, Mr. Druther?”

“God no,” he said. “No tabloids, no broadsheets, and
def
initely no television or radio news. I vastly prefer to live in my own cloud cuckoo land. Anything else sends me into such depression that I can’t get out of bed in the morning and the
only
thing that cheers me up is Mum’s ginger biscuits. But if I eat them, I’m prone to weight gain, my clothes cease to fit, I must purchase anew, and…Surely, you get the idea, yes? Abney Park Cemetery? Where’s Abney Park Cemetery?”

“North London.”

“North London?” He made it sound like Pluto. “My
God.
What was she doing
there
? Was she mugged? Kidnapped? She wasn’t …She wasn’t
interfered
with, was she?”

Isabelle thought that having her jugular vein ripped open was fairly well interfered with, although she knew that wasn’t what Jayson meant. She said, “We’ll leave it at
murdered
for the present. How well did you know Jemima?”

Not particularly well, as things developed. It seemed that Jayson had spoken to Jemima by phone but had actually only seen her twice since they shared no work hours and, truth to tell, nothing else either. He knew her more from these than from her actual person, he said.
These
turned out to be a small stack of postcards. Jayson drew them from a cubbyhole near the till, perhaps eight of them in all. They comprised the image that Deborah St. James had taken of Jemima Hastings, undoubtedly sold like other images from the collection at the National Portrait Gallery’s gift shop. Someone had printed “Have You Seen This Woman” in black marker pen on the front of each card. On the reverse side was a telephone number with “Please Phone” scrawled above it.

Paolo had brought them in for Jemima, Jayson revealed. He knew that much because on the days that he worked and Jemima did not, Paolo di Fazio stopped at the shop anyway if he’d found more cards. This particular set Paolo had delivered several days ago, although Jemima hadn’t been there to receive them. Jayson reckoned she had been destroying them as they’d been delivered, since more than once he’d found their shredded remains in the rubbish on the days when he himself worked.

“I think it was some sort of ritual for her,” he said.

Paolo di Fazio. He was one of the lodgers. Isabelle recalled the name from Barbara Havers’ report of her conversation with Jemima Hastings’ landlady. She said, “Does Mr. di Fazio work nearby?”

“He does. He’s the mask man.”

“The masked man?” Isabelle asked. “What on earth—”

“No, no. Not
masked
. Mask. He creates masks. He’s got a stall over in the market hall. He’s very good. He’s done one of me, actually. They’re a bit of a souvenir of …well,
more
than a souvenir, really. I think he has a bit of a
thing
for Jemima, if you ask me. I mean, why else would he be scurrying in and out of the shop with postcards he’s collected for her?”

“Anyone else come looking for her? On her days off when you were here, that is?” Isabelle asked.

He shook his head. “Nary a soul,” he told them. “Only Paolo.”

“What about people she associated with, here at the market?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know them, dear heart, if there are any. There may be, of course, but as I’ve said, we worked on different days, so … ?” He shrugged. “Paolo could tell you. If he will, that is.”

“Why wouldn’t he? Is there something about Paolo we ought to know before we speak to him?”

“Gracious, no. I didn’t mean to imply …Well, I did get the impression he watched her rather
closely
, if you know what I mean. He did
ask
about her, much like you. Did anyone stop in to the shop looking for her, asking about her, meeting her, waiting for her, that sort of thing …”

“How did she come to be working here?” Lynley asked the question, turning from an examination of the Cuban cigars in the large display case.

“Job Centre,” Jayson said. “And I can’t tell you which one because they’re all computerised now, aren’t they, so she could have come to us from Blackpool, for all I know. We advertised the job with the centre and in she came. Dad interviewed her and hired her on the spot.”

“We’ll want to speak to him.”

“With Dad? Why? Heavens, you’re not thinking …” Jayson laughed, then
whoopsed
and covered his mouth. He arranged his features into a suitably lugubrious expression. “Sorry. I was just picturing Dad as a murderer. I expect that’s why you want to speak with him, isn’t it? To get his alibi? Isn’t that what you do?”

“We do indeed. We’ll need yours as well.”

“My alibi?” A hand pressed to his chest. “I have no idea where Ashley Park is. And anyway, if Jemima was there and it was during shop hours that she was done in, then I would have been here.”

“It’s Abney Park,” Isabelle informed him. “North London. Stoke Newington, to be precise, Mr. Druther.”

“Wher
ev
er. I would have been here. From half-past nine until half-past six. Until eight if we’re talking about a Wednesday.
Are
we? Because as I told you in the beginning, I don’t read the papers and I’ve no idea—”

“Start,” Isabelle instructed.

“What?”

“The papers. Start reading the papers, Mr. Druther. You’ll be amazed by what you can find inside them. Now tell us again where Paolo di Fazio might be found.”

H
E WONDERED IF
they were seraphim. There was something about them that marked them as different. They were not mortal. He could see that. The real question, then, was what type were they? Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities? Good, bad, warrior, guardian? Archangels, even, like Raphael, Michael, or Gabriel? Archangels that scholars and theologians as yet knew nothing of? Angels of the highest order, perhaps, come to make war with forces so evil that only a sword held in the hand of a creature of light could possibly defeat it?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell.

He’d assumed guardian about himself, but he’d been wrong. He saw that he was meant to be Michael’s warrior, but
when
he saw it, it was far too late.

But watching over has power …

Watching over is nothing. Watching over is watching evil
,
and evil destroys.

Destruction destroys. Destruction begets more destruction. Learning is meant. Guarding means learning.

Guarding means fear.

Fear means hate. Fear means anger. Guarding means love.

Guarding means hiding.

Hiding means standing watch which means guarding which means love. I am meant to guard.

You are meant to kill. Warriors defeat. You are called upon to war. I call upon you. Legions upon legions call upon you.

I guarded. I guard.

You killed.

He wanted to strike his mind where the voices were. They were louder today than they’d ever been, louder than shouting, louder than music. He could
see
the voices as well as hear them, and they filled his vision so that he finally made out the wings. They were hidden angels but their wings betrayed them, and they watched him and bore witness from above. They lined up one right next to the other with their mouths opening and their mouths closing and celestial singing should have come from those mouths but what came instead was wind. There was a howling upon it and after the wind came the voices that he knew but would not listen to, so he gave himself to the warriors and the guardians and their determination to win him to causes so unlike himself.

He squeezed his eyes shut but still he saw them and still he heard them and still he kept on and on and on till perspiration wetted his cheeks, till he realised it was not perspiration but tears, and then the sound of
bravo
coming from somewhere but not from the angels this time, for they were gone and then so was he. He was stumbling, climbing, making his way to the churchyard and then to the quiet that was not quiet at all for there
was
no quiet, not for him.

L
YNLEY WASN’T BOTHERED
by the part he was playing in the investigation, something between chauffeur and dogsbody to Isabelle Ardery. The role allowed him to ease his way back into police work, and if he was going to return to police work, it definitely had to be a gradual movement.

“Bit of a wanker,” was Ardery’s assessment of Jayson Druther once they left the tobacco shop.

Lynley couldn’t disagree. He indicated the route they needed to take to get to Jubilee Market Hall, across the cobbles from the main area of Covent Garden.

Inside the hall, the noise was ear popping, coming from hawkers, from boom boxes set within the stalls, from shouted conversations, and from buyers attempting to broker deals with sellers of everything from souvenir T-shirts to works of art. They found the mask maker’s stall after elbowing their way up and down three aisles. He had a good position near a far doorway, making him either the first or the last stall one came to but in any case a stall one would unquestionably see, for it sat at an angle with nothing on either side of it. It was large as well, larger than most, and this was due to the fact that the mask making itself appeared to go on within it. A stool for the artist’s subject sat beneath a tall light, and next to it a table held bags of plaster and several other containers. Unfortunately, what the stall did not hold at the present moment was the artist himself, although the heavy plastic sheeting that formed its rear wall bore photographs of the masks he produced along with their subjects posed next to them.

A sign on a makeshift counter indicated the time when the artist would return. Ardery glanced at this and then at her watch, after which she said to Lynley, “Let’s have some refreshment.”

They sought said refreshment back the way they’d come, down below the tobacconist in the courtyard. The violinist who’d played there earlier was gone, and it was just as well, because Ardery apparently wanted conversation along with her refreshment. This turned out to be a glass of wine, at which Lynley lifted an eyebrow.

She saw this. “I’ve no objection to a glass of wine on duty, Inspector Lynley. We deserve one after J-a-y-s-o-n. Please join me. I hate to feel like a lush.”

“I think I won’t,” he said. “I hit it rather hard after Helen died.”

“Ah. Yes. I expect you did.”

Lynley ordered mineral water in turn at which Ardery lifted her own eyebrow. She said to him, “Not even a soft drink? Are you always this virtuous, Thomas?”

“Only when I want to impress.”

“And do you?”

“Want to impress you? Don’t we all? If you’re to be the guv, then it serves the rest of us to begin jockeying for positions of prominence, doesn’t it?”

“I have serious doubts that you’ve spent much time jockeying for any position.”

“Unlike yourself? You’re climbing quickly.”

“That’s what I do.” She looked round the courtyard in which they sat. It wasn’t as crowded as the area above them since here there was only the restaurant cum wine bar at the base of a wide stairway. But it was crowded enough. Every table was taken. They’d been lucky to find a spot to sit. “God, what a mass of humanity,” she said. “Why d’you reckon people come to places like these?”

“Associations,” he said. She turned back to him. He fingered a crockery bowl holding cubes of sugar, rotating it in his fingers as he went on. “History, art, literature. The opportunity to imagine. Perhaps a revisiting of a place from childhood. All sorts of reasons.”

“But not to buy T-shirts saying ‘Mind the gap’?”