Ash & Bone

53

Under as high security as he could muster, Framlingham had set the technicians to work on the video tape: after enhancing the picture as much as they could, they had transferred it on to disk. From this they printed off a number of digital images, and it was these that Elder carried with him as he walked across Blackheath. Past six and the sky had already taken on that luminous orange glow; there were stars faintly visible above, though compared to Cornwall, precious few. One of them, he remembered reading somewhere, was some kind of satellite station and not a star at all.

Anton's T-shirt was white today instead of black, otherwise he looked exactly the same. The same sardonic, slightly camp look in his eye.

'She's in what we laughingly call the breakfast room, watching the snooker. Can't be doing with it myself. All that hushed commentary, as if they were in church. He's just kissed the ball up against the baulk pocket. Well…'

If Lynette Drury were indeed watching the snooker, she was doing so with her good eye closed.

The room smelt fetid and warm.

'Don't tire her,' Anton said.

Elder brought over another chair and sat at an angle between the wheelchair and the screen. He sat there silently while one of the players made a break of forty-seven.

'I didn't think you'd be back so soon,' Lynette said.

'Even after you sent the video?'

'What video's that?'

'Singin' in the Rain.'

'I never took to Gene Kelly much. More of a Fred Astaire fan, myself. Lighter on his feet I always thought. More debonair.'

'Something missing in the credits,' Elder said. 'My copy, at least. Nothing about the locations. The party scene in particular.'

Lynette watched as a balding man with a cummerbund barely holding in his beer gut skewed the cue ball in off the black and looked heavenwards for forbearance. 'Manningtree,' she said, still staring at the screen. 'Ben had a place out there. Not just him. Him and a few others. Country club, that's what they liked to call it. Gone now.'

'Gone?'

'Sold to some foundation. Don't know what they're called.'

'How long ago was that?'

'Three or four years, must be. Around the time Ben bought the place in Kyrenia.'

Elder took the photographs from the envelope and spread them across her lap. The pace of her breathing quickened and then slowed. They showed, in bare bones, the story of what had happened in the bedroom. It didn't take any great imagination to fill the gaps.

'I assume,' Elder said, 'there was a camera hidden in the room.'

'In every room. Whenever there was a party, Ben had them on all the time. Some years he'd make a Christmas tape, you know, highlights. Send 'em round to his friends.'

'Not this particular year,' Elder said, indicating the photographs.

'No, not that year.' Then, 'Watch what you're bloody doin'!' as the bald man's opponent clipped the yellow while attempting to pot the green.

'The two girls,' Elder said. 'Do you know what happened to them?'

She took her time answering. 'I know there was a problem. It got sorted.'

'Sorted?'

'Yes. I don't know how. Didn't want to know.'

Elder leaned forward and tapped one of the photographs, showing the girl on the floor beside the bed. 'This girl, she's dead. Neck broken, that would be my guess.'

'If you say so.'

'And this girl?' He was pointing at a young, dark-haired girl cowering, terrified, in the far corner of the room. 'What happened to her?'

Lynette's good eye flickered between the photograph and Elder's face, and then back to the screen in time to see one of the reds slide gracefully into the top pocket, the cue ball skewing back to cover the black.

'I said, they got it sorted. Ben and George between them. Made it go away.'

'Between them?'

'Fucking yes! Have I got to repeat every fucking thing I say?'

The anger in her voice brought on a fit of coughing, raising spittle to her lips.

Elder waited until the coughing had subsided. 'How exactly did they make it go away? Pay her off? What?'

'I'm trying to watch this,' Lynette said. 'And you're doing sod all for my concentration.'

'Who were they? The two girls? What were their names?'

Lynette started to cough again. 'Call Anton for me, will you? I need a fuckin' drink.'

'You used to get him girls, Mallory. Young girls. You must know who they were.'

'I need a fuckin' drink!'

Anton showed his face around the door.

'Out,' Elder said.

A drink.'

Anton hesitated, uncertain.

'Get out,' Elder said.

He went.

'You've helped us so far,' Elder said. 'Help us with this.'

'I've done nothing.'

He touched her hand and she pulled it away, turning her face towards the wall. Only gradually did he realise that she was speaking, the same sounds over and over, low, barely audible, the same names. 'Judy. Jill. Judy and Jill. Judy and Jill.'

He took hold of her arm, gently, not hard, and felt skin slip loose across bone.

'Judy and Jill,' he repeated. 'That was their names.'

She looked into his face.

'They were twins.'

Long after Elder had gone, long after one frame of the snooker had finished and another begun, Lynette propelled her chair out of that room and into another, guilt and uncertainty jostling up against one another in her brain. She thought she might still have Mallory's number somewhere. Perhaps she owed him that much at least.