Ash & Bone

21

If there was one thing guaranteed to make Elder feel he was getting old, it was a pub in Camden on a Saturday night. The tables, square and heavy, were crowded and crammed with empty bottles and glasses, awash with beer and the language of the brag. Not a spare seat anywhere. A scrum, three deep, at the bar. A large television screen showing continuous music videos, nobody listening, nobody watching. Tobacco smoke laced with the instantly recognisable scent of cannabis. Voices raised, loud, above a mixture of reggae and some kind of stripped-down sledgehammer rock. Age aside, Elder stood out for not having some part of his body studded or pierced, for not wearing black.

'Over here,' Vanessa said, seizing his arm.

With a fast smile and judicious use of the elbows, she found them a haven of sorts, squashed up against the window which faced out on to the High Street, smoke and condensation blurring the pane.

'Sorry,' she said.

'What for?'

'Bringing you here.'

Elder summoned up a smile. 'I've known worse.' He just couldn't remember when.

'Of course,' she said, 'it might be nothing.' Her words all but lost in an upsurge of sound.

'I'm sorry?'

'I said, it might be nothing.'

'Try me.'

He had to lean forward to catch every word. What Mallory and Repton had been playing at, he wasn't sure, but one thing was certain, they'd got Vanessa truly rattled.

'And you weren't holding anything back from them? Something Maddy might have said?'

'God, no.'

'You said they gave her a pretty tough time at the inquiry.'

'Yes. Said they were likely going to have her back in, but I don't think they ever did.'

Elder had obtained a copy of the Hertfordshire team's report and had still to get around to reading it.

Vanessa's face tilted up towards his, perspiration on her upper lip. 'It did make me think of something Maddy mentioned, about the Grant thing, something I'd more or less forgotten. There was this guy, SO19, Firearms, you know? Coming on to her. Not just the once either. Didn't like no for an answer.'

'You know his name?'

'Don't think she ever said. But ginger, she did say that. Ginger-haired. No wonder she never fancied him.'

'You think he might have persevered? Chanced his arm again?'

'You never know, do you? What some blokes will do.'

A bottle broke near the far end of the bar and Elder slipped down from his seat. 'Let's drink up and get out of here, okay?'

The street was busy with the slow passage of cars; rain dithered in the air and glossed the headlights. Young men and women trawled the pavement in threes and fours, the occasional couple arm in arm or hand in hand. Oblivious, a girl of no more than sixteen or seventeen sat cross-legged on the ground, tears raking her face. An elderly black man, dreadlocks streaming out from under his beret, pantomimed a sinuous shuffle to a tinny song from a beat box on the ground.

Always the intermittent sound of police sirens, some little distance off.

'I'm hungry,' Vanessa said suddenly. 'How about you?'

'I don't think so,' Elder said, realising as he spoke it wasn't true.

They bought falafels from a stall and ate them in pitta bread, leaning up against the wall.

'How's it all going, anyway?' Vanessa said. 'The investigation.'

'Oh, you know.'

'Still stuck?'

'Pretty much. But something will open it, it usually does.'

She smiled. 'I don't think I've exactly been a great help.'

'No. You were right to tell me. Ginger, we'll check him out. Besides, it's a good falafel. Can't get this in Cornwall, you know. Pasties, that's about it.'

'Cream teas.'

'That too.'

A youth wearing an England soccer shirt and little else, despite the cold, lurched against them, apologised, and staggered on his way.

'I'd best be making a move,' Elder said, stepping clear.

'Okay.'

'How d'you get back from here, Tube?'

'Bus.'

They walked together towards the station.

'Take care,' she said at the entrance. 'Good luck.'

'You too.'

The street light shone bright on her face.

When Vanessa sidestepped the usual coterie of druggies and near-drunks on her way to the bus-stop, it's doubtful that she noticed the dark blue saloon illegally parked near the crossroads, the man watching her carefully from behind the wheel.

Elder slept fitfully, disturbed by dreams in which his daughter, like a dragonfly, sloughed off one skin to reveal another, her face and body becoming those of Maddy Birch, only to be replaced, as easily, by those of someone he didn't recognise, so that, when he woke, his hair was matted to his scalp, the quilt, sticky with sweat, tangled between his legs.

Clambering from the bed, he stood for fully five minutes under the shower, warm water washing over head and shoulders as he soaped himself clean; a final burst of cold, face raised, as if to purge himself before stepping clear.

Coffee, toast, a white shirt more or less uncreased from the hanger, navy blue trousers, the same comfortable, well-worn shoes; yesterday's shirt and boxer shorts he stuffed into the washing machine, along with the quilt cover and pillowcase.

When he dialled Joanne's number, hoping to speak to Katherine, all he got was an automated voice requesting that he leave a message.

Someone in the flat below was treating him to Capital Gold and he countered with Radio 3. Haydn, probably. Wasn't it usually Haydn? Mozart or Haydn. Maybe Bach.

A chapter of Patrick O'Brian – enemy vessel at four o'clock on the horizon, run out the guns, run up the flag – and he was ready for something altogether drier. Scooping up his mobile just in case, he slipped it into his pocket; the 'Grant Inquiry Report', notebook and ballpoint were all ready to go. The A-Z he checked in the car.

No space in the small car park close to Kenwood House, so he parked on Hampstead Lane. Most of the tables outside the cafe were taken, Sunday broadsheets spread wide. The weather was kind. He found a space towards the rear corner, broke off a piece of his almond croissant, tasted his coffee and began to read. Somehow, the hum of other voices around him made concentration easier.

Ashley and his team, it seemed, had gone about their task with thoroughness if not inspiration; reading between the lines, it was clear certain sections of the Met had not made their task any easier than was necessary. The report's conclusions, which laid down a modicum of organisational blame but nothing else, were unexceptional. In the matter of James Grant and the second gun, Detective Superintendent Mallory had been given the benefit of any possible doubt.

Elder thought a few words with Trevor Ashley might not be out of place.

Taking out his mobile phone, he tried Joanne again with the same result.

The residue of his coffee was cold.

When he had himself been an officer in the Met and stationed in West London, he and Joanne had driven to Hampstead Heath with Katherine one Sunday afternoon and flown her kite from the top of Parliament Hill. Katherine – five then, or was she six? – had lost patience and run down the slope towards the children's playground and the paddling pool, Elder scrambling after her, laughing, while Joanne reeled in the kite's thin line.

Had she already been sleeping with Martyn Miles by then?

Some truths it was better not to know.