For the Sake of Elena

9

Anthony Weaver stared at the discreet nameplate on the desk-P. L. Beck, Funeral Director-and felt overcome by a surge of simple-minded gratitude. This main business office of the mortuary was as unfunereal as good taste would allow it to be, and while its warm autumn colours and comfortable furniture did not alter the reality which had brought him here, at least it did not underscore the finality of his daughter’s death with sombre decorations, canned organ music, and lugubrious employees dressed in black.

Next to him, Glyn sat with her hands balled into her lap, both feet flat on the floor, her head and shoulders rigid. She did not look at him.

Upon her continued insistence throughout the morning, he’d taken her to the police station where, in spite of what he had tried to tell her, she had fully expected to find Elena’s body and be able to see it. When told that the body had been taken to autopsy, she had demanded to be allowed to observe the procedure. And when with a horrified look of supplication in Anthony’s direction, the female police constable working reception had gently said with apologies that it simply wasn’t possible, that it couldn’t be allowed, that at any rate the autopsy was performed in another location, not here at the station, and even if that weren’t the case, family members-

“I’m her mother!” Glyn cried. “She’s mine! I want to see her!”

The Cambridge police were not an unsympathetic lot. They took her quickly to a conference room where a concerned young secretary tried to ply her with mineral water which Glyn refused. A second secretary brought in a cup of tea. A traffic warden offered aspirin. And while anxious calls were put out for the police psychologist and the public relations officer, Glyn continued to insist that she see Elena. Her voice was tight and shrill. Her features were taut. When she didn’t get what she wanted, she began to shout.

Witness to all of this, Anthony felt only his own growing shame. It was directed at her for causing a humiliating public scene. It was directed at himself for being ashamed of her. So when she finally turned on him and fl ew in his direction and accused him of being too self-centred to be capable of identifying his own daughter’s body so how did they even know it was Elena Weaver whose body they had if they didn’t let her mother make the identifi cation, her mother who gave her birth, her mother who loved her, her mother who raised her alone, do you hear me alone you bastards he had nothing to do with anything after she was five years old because he had what he wanted he had his precious freedom all right so let me see her LET ME SEE HER…

I am wood, he had thought. Nothing she says can touch me. Although this stoic determination to remain inviolate sufficed to keep him from striking out in turn, it was not enough to prevent his unrestrained mind from shooting back through time, sifting through memories in an attempt to recall-let alone understand-what forces had ever brought him together with this woman in the first place.

It should have been something more than sex: a mutual interest, perhaps, a shared experience, a similarity of background, a goal, an ideal. Had any of those been present between them, they might have stood a fi ghting chance of survival. But instead it had been a drinks party in an elegant house off the Trumping-ton Road where some thirty postgraduates who had worked for his election had been invited to the victory celebration of the new local MP. At loose ends for the evening, Anthony had gone with a friend. Glyn Westhompson had done the same. Their shared indifference towards the esoteric machinations of Cambridge politics supplied the initial illusion of mutuality. Far too much champagne provided the physical allure. When he’d suggested that they take their own bottle out onto the terrace to watch the moonlight silver the trees in the garden, his intention had been a bit of casual kissing, a chance to fondle the ample breasts which he could see through the sheer material of her blouse, and an opportunity in privacy to slip his hand between her thighs.

But the terrace was dark, the night was quite warm, and Glyn’s reaction was not what he’d thought it might be. Her response to his kiss took him by surprise. Her eager mouth hungrily sucked his tongue. One hand unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra while the other insinuated itself into his trousers. She moaned her arousal. She straddled his leg and rotated her hips.

He had no conscious thoughts. He had only the need to be inside her, to feel the warmth and the soft wet suction of her body, to feel his own release.

They didn’t speak. They used the terrace’s stone balustrade as a fulcrum. He lifted her to it, she spread her legs. He plunged and plunged, panting with the effort to bring himself to climax before anyone should walk out onto the terrace and catch them in the act, while she bit his neck and gasped and tore at his hair. It was the only time in his life that he actually thought of the word fucking when he took a woman. And when it was over, he couldn’t remember her name.

Five-perhaps seven-graduate students came out of the house before he and Glyn had separated. Someone said “Whoops!” and someone else “I’ll have a bit of that myself,” and all of them chuckled and went on into the garden. More than anything else, it was the thought of their derision that made him put his arms round Glyn, kiss her, and murmur huskily, “Let’s get out of here, all right?” Because somehow leaving with her elevated the act, making them more than two sweating bodies intent upon mating, without intellect or soul.

She’d gone with him to the cramped house on Hope Street which he shared with three friends. She spent the night, and then another, rolling around with him on the thin mattress that served as his bed, eating a quick meal when the mood was upon her, smoking French cigarettes, drinking English gin, and padding again and again to his bedroom, leading him to lie on that mattress on the floor. She’d moved in slowly over two weeks’ time-fi rst leaving behind an article of clothing, then a book, then stopping by with a lamp. They never spoke of love. They never fell in love. They merely fell into marriage, which, after all, was the highest form of public validation he could possibly give to a mindless act of sex with a woman he didn’t know.

The office door opened. A man-presumably P.L. Beck-entered. Like the offi ce itself, his clothing reflected a careful avoidance of that which might underscore death. He wore a natty blue blazer over soft grey trousers. A Pembroke tie formed a perfect knot at his throat.

“Dr. Weaver?” he said. And then with a crisp turn on his heel to Glyn, “And Mrs. Weaver?” Somehow, he’d done his homework. It was an artful way to avoid linking their names. Rather than offer factitious condolences over the death of a girl he did not know, he said, “The police said you’d be coming. I’d like to get you through this as quickly as possible. May I offer you something? Coffee or tea?”

“Nothing for me,” Anthony said. Glyn was silent.

Mr. Beck did not wait for her to reply. He sat down and said, “It’s my understanding that the police still have the body. So it may be some days before they release her to us. They’ve told you that, haven’t they?”

“No. Just that they’re doing the autopsy.”

“I see.” Thoughtfully, he steepled his hands and leaned his elbows on the top of the desk. “It generally takes a few days to run all the tests. They do organ studies, tissue studies, toxicology reports. In a sudden death, the procedure moves fairly rapidly, especially if the”-with a quick, concerned glance in Glyn’s direction-“if the deceased has been under a doctor’s care. But in a case like this…”

“We understand,” Anthony said.

“A murder,” Glyn said. She moved her eyes off the wall and fixed them on Mr. Beck although her body didn’t alter a degree in the chair. “You mean a murder. Say it. Don’t slither round the truth. She isn’t the deceased. She’s the victim. It’s a murder. I’m not used to that yet, but if I hear it enough no doubt it’ll pop up quite naturally in my speech. My daughter, the victim. My daughter’s death, the murder.”

Mr. Beck looked at Anthony, perhaps with the hope that he would say something in answer to the implied invective, perhaps with the expectation of Anthony’s offering some word of comfort or support to his former wife. When Anthony said nothing, Mr. Beck continued quickly.

“You’ll need to let me know where and when the services are to be held and where she’s to be interred. We’ve a lovely chapel here if you’d like to use that for the service. And- of course, I know this is difficult for you both-but you need to decide if you want a public viewing.”

“A public…?” At the thought of his daughter being put on display for the curious, Anthony felt the hair bristle on the backs of his hands. “That’s not possible. She isn’t-”

“I want it.” Glyn’s nails, Anthony saw, were going completely white with the pressure she was exerting against her palms.

“You don’t want that. You haven’t seen what she looks like.”

“Please don’t tell me what I want. I said I’ll see her. I’ll do so. I want everyone to see her.”

Mr. Beck intervened with, “We can do some repairs. With facial putty and makeup, no one will be able to see the full extent of-”

Glyn snapped forward. Like a self-preserving reflex, Mr. Beck flinched. “You aren’t listening to me. I want the damage seen. I want the world to know.”

Anthony wanted to ask, “And what will you gain?” But he knew the answer. She’d given Elena over to his care, and she wanted the world to see how he’d botched the job. For fi f-teen years she’d kept their daughter in one of the roughest areas of London and Elena had emerged from the experience with one chipped tooth to mark the only difficulty she’d ever faced, a brawl over the affections of an acne-scarred fi fth former who’d spent a lunch hour with her instead of his steady girlfriend. And neither Glyn nor Elena had ever considered that uncapped tooth even a minute lapse in Glyn’s ability to protect her daughter. Instead, it was for both of them Elena’s badge of honour, her declaration of equality. For the three girls whom she had fought could hear, but they were no match for the splintered crate of new potatoes and the two metal milk baskets which Elena had commandeered for defensive weapons from a nearby greengrocer’s when she’d come under attack.

Fifteen years in London, one chipped tooth to show for it. Fifteen months in Cambridge, one barbarous death.

Anthony wouldn’t fight her. He said, “Have you a brochure we might look at? Something we can use in order to decide…?”

Mr. Beck seemed only too willing to cooperate. He said, “Of course,” and hastily slid open a drawer of his desk. From this he took a three-ring binder covered in maroon plastic with the words Beck and Sons, Funeral Directors printed in gold letters across the front. He passed this across to them.

Anthony opened it. Plastic covers encased eight-by-ten colour photographs. He began to flip through them, looking without seeing, reading without assimilating. He recognised woods: mahogany and oak. He recognised terms: naturally resistant to corrosion, rubber gasket, crepe lining, asphalt coating, vacuum plate. Faintly, he heard Mr. Beck murmuring about the relative merits of copper or sixteen-gauge steel over oak, about lift and tilt mattresses, about the placement of a hinge. He heard him say:

“These Uniseal caskets are quite the best. The locking mechanism in addition to the gasket seals the top while the continuous weld on the bottom seals that as well. So you’ve maximum protection to resist the entry of-” He hesitated delicately. The indecision was written plainly on his face. Worms, beetles, moisture, mildew. How best to say it?-“the elements.”

The words in the binder slid out of focus. Anthony heard Glyn say, “Have you coffi ns here?”

“Only a few. People generally make a choice from the brochures. And under the circumstances, please don’t feel you must-”

“I’d like to see them.”

Mr. Beck’s eyes flitted to Anthony. He seemed to be waiting for a protest of some sort. When none was forthcoming, he said, “Certainly. This way,” and led them out of the offi ce.

Anthony followed his former wife and the funeral director. He wanted to insist that they make the decision within the safety of Mr. Beck’s office where photographs would allow both of them to hold the final reality at bay for just a while longer. But he knew that to call for distance between them and the fact of Elena’s burial would be interpreted as further evidence of inadequacy. And hadn’t Elena’s death already served to illustrate his uselessness as a father, once again underscoring the contention which Glyn had asserted for years: that his sole contribution to their daughter’s upbringing had been a single, blind gamete that knew how to swim?

“Here they are.” Mr. Beck pushed open a set of heavy oak doors. “I’ll leave you alone.”

Glyn said, “That won’t be necessary.”

“But surely you’ll want to discuss-”

“No.” She moved past him into the showroom. There were no decorations or extraneous furnishings, just a few coffins lined up along the pearl-coloured walls, their lids gaping open upon velvet, satin, and crepe, their bodies standing on waist-high, translucent pedestals.

Anthony forced himself to follow Glyn from one to the next. Each had a discreet price tag, each bore the same declaration about the extent of protection guaranteed by the manufacturer, each had a ruched lining, a matching pillow, and a coverlet folded over the coffi n lid. Each had its own name: Neapolitan Blue, Windsor Poplar, Autumn Oak, Venetian Bronze. Each had an individually highlighted feature, a shell design, a set of barley sugar end posts, or delicate embroidery on the interior of the lid. Forcing himself to move along the display, Anthony tried not to visualise what Elena would look like when she fi nally lay in one of these coffins with her light hair spread out like silk threads on the pillow.

Glyn halted in front of a simple grey coffi n with a plain satin lining. She tapped her fi ngers against it. As if this gesture bade him to do so, Mr. Beck hurried to join them. His lips were pursed tightly. He was pulling at his chin.

“What is this?” Glyn asked. A small sign on the lid said Nonprotective exterior. Its price tag read £200.

“Pressed wood.” Mr. Beck made a nervous adjustment to his Pembroke tie and rapidly continued. “This is pressed wood beneath a flannel covering, a satin interior, which is quite nice, of course, but the exterior has no protection at all save for the flannel itself and to be frank if I may, considering our weather, I wouldn’t be at all comfortable recommending this particular coffin to you. We keep it for cases where there are diffi culties…Well, diffi culties with finances. I can’t think you’d want your daughter…” He let the drifting quality of his voice complete the thought.

Anthony began to say, “Of course,” but Glyn interrupted with, “This coffin will do.”

For a moment, Anthony did nothing more than stare at his former wife. Then he found the will to say, “You can’t think I’ll allow her to be buried in this.”

She said quite distinctly, “I don’t care what you intend to allow. I’ve not enough money for-”

“I’ll pay.”

She looked at him for the fi rst time since they’d arrived. “With your wife’s money? I think not.”

“This has nothing to do with Justine.”

Mr. Beck took a step away from them. He straightened out the small price sign on a coffin lid. He said, “I’ll leave you to talk.”

“There’s no need.” Glyn opened her large black handbag and began shoving articles this way and that. A set of keys clanked. A compact snapped open. A ballpoint pen slipped out onto the floor. “You’ll take a cheque, won’t you? It’ll have to be drawn on my bank in London. If that’s a problem, you can phone for some sort of guarantee. I’ve been doing business with them for years, so-”

“Glyn. I won’t have it.”

She swung to face him. Her hip hit the coffin, jarring it on its pedestal. The lid fell shut with a hollow thud. “You won’t have what?” she asked. “You have no rights here.”

“We’re talking about my daughter.”

Mr. Beck began to edge towards the door.

“Stay where you are.” Angry colour patched Glyn’s cheeks. “You walked out on your daughter, Anthony. Let’s not forget that. You wanted your career. Let’s not forget that. You wanted to chase skirts. Let’s not forget that. You got what you wanted. All of it. Every bit. You have no more rights here.” Chequebook in hand, she stooped to the floor for the pen. She began to write, using the pressed wood coffin lid as support.

Her hand was shaking. Anthony reached for the chequebook, saying, “Glyn. Please. For God’s sake.”

“No,” she said. “I’ll pay for this. I don’t want your money. You can’t buy me off.”

“I’m not trying to buy you off. I just want Elena-”

“Don’t say her name! Don’t you say it!”

Mr. Beck said, “Let me leave you,” and without acknowledging Glyn’s immediate “No!” he hurried from the room.

Glyn continued to write. She clutched the pen like a weapon in her hand. “He said two hundred pounds, didn’t he?”

“Don’t do this,” Anthony said. “Don’t make this another battle between us.”

“She’ll wear that blue dress Mum got her last birthday.”

“We can’t bury her like a pauper. I won’t let you do it. I can’t.”

Glyn ripped the cheque from the book. She said, “Where’d that man get off to? Here’s his money. Let’s go.” She headed for the door.

Anthony reached for her arm.

She jerked away. “You bastard,” she hissed. “Bastard! Who brought her up? Who spent years trying to give her some language? Who helped her with her schoolwork and dried her tears and washed her clothes and sat up with her at night when she was puling and sick? Not you, you bastard. And not your ice queen wife. This is my daughter, Anthony. My daughter. Mine. And I’ll bury her exactly as I see fit. Because unlike you, I’m not hot after some big poncey job, so I don’t have to give a damn what anyone thinks.”

He examined her with sudden, curious dispassion, realising that he saw no evidence of grief. He saw no mother’s devotion to her child and nothing that illustrated the magnitude of loss. “This has nothing to do with burying Elena,” he said in slow but complete understanding. “You’re still dealing with me. I’m not sure you even care much that she’s dead.”

“How dare you,” she whispered.

“Have you even cried, Glyn? Do you feel any grief? Do you feel anything at all beyond the need to use her murder for a bit more revenge? And how can anyone be surprised by that? After all, that’s how you used most of her life.”

He didn’t see the blow coming. She slammed her right hand across his face, knocking his spectacles to the fl oor.

“You filthy piece of-” She raised her arm to strike again.

He caught her wrist. “You’ve waited years to do that. I’m only sorry you didn’t have the audience you’d have liked.” He pushed her away. She fell against the grey coffi n. But she was not spent.

She spit out the words: “Don’t talk to me of grief. Don’t you ever-ever-talk to me of grief.”

She turned away from him, flinging her arms over the coffin lid as if she would embrace it. She began to weep.

“I have nothing. She’s gone. I can’t have her back. I can’t find her anywhere. And I can’t… I can never…” The fingers of one hand curled, pulling at the flannel that covered the coffi n. “But you can. You still can, Anthony. And I want you to die.”

Even through his outrage, he felt the sudden stirring of a horrified compassion. After the years of their enmity, after these moments in the funeral home, he wouldn’t have believed it possible that he should feel anything for her save outright loathing. But in those words you can, he saw the extent and the nature of his former wife’s grief. She was forty-six years old. She could never have another child.

No matter that the thought of bringing another child into the world to take Elena’s place was beyond unthinkable, that he’d lost his reason for living the moment he’d looked on his daughter’s corpse. He’d spend the rest of his life in a ceaseless involvement in academic affairs so that he would never again have a free moment in which he might have to remember the ruin of her face and the mark of the ligature round her neck, but that was no more than a point of indifference. He could still have another child, whatever the wilderness of his current grief. He still had that choice. But Glyn did not. Her sorrow was doubled by the incontrovertible fact of her age.

He took a step towards her, placing his hand on her shuddering back. “Glyn, I’m-”

“Don’t you touch me!” She rolled away from him, lost her footing, and fell to one knee.

The fl imsy flannel covering on the coffi n tore. The wood was thin and vulnerable beneath it.

Heart pounding in both his chest and his ears, Lynley staggered to a halt within sight of Fen Causeway. He dug in his pocket for his watch. He flipped it open, panting, and checked the time. Seven minutes.

He shook his head, bent nearly double with his hands on his knees, wheezing like an undiagnosed case of emphysema. Less than a mile’s run and he felt completely done for. Sixteen years of cigarette smoking had taken its toll. Ten months of abstinence was not enough to redeem him.

He stumbled onto the worn wooden planks that bridged the stream between Robinson Crusoe’s Island and Sheep’s Green. He leaned against the metal rail, threw his head back, and gulped in air like a man saved from drowning. Sweat beaded his face and dampened his jersey. What a wonderful experience it was to run.

With a grunt, he turned to rest his elbows against the rail, letting his head hang while he caught his breath. Seven minutes, he thought, and not quite a mile. She would have run the same course in not much more than fi ve.

There could be no doubt about it. She ran daily with her stepmother. She was a long-distance runner. She ran with the Cambridge cross country team. If her calendar was any indication of reality, she’d been running with the University Hare and Hounds as far back as last January and probably before. Depending on the distance she had planned to go that morning, her pacing might have been different. But he couldn’t imagine her taking any longer than ten minutes to run to the island, no matter the course she had intended to follow. That being the case, unless she stopped off somewhere along the route, she would have reached the site of her murder no later than six-twenty-fi ve.

Respiration finally slowing, he raised his head. Even without the fog which had shrouded most of the region on the previous day, he had to admit that this was an exceptional spot for a murder. Crack willows, alders, and beeches- none of them yet leafless-created an impenetrable screen which shielded the island not only from the causeway bridge which arched above its south end on the way into the town but also from the public footpath that ran along the stream-Sheehan’s bit of a ditch-not ten feet away. Anyone wishing to carry off a crime reaped the benefi t of virtual privacy here. And although the occasional pedestrian crossed over the larger bridge from Coe Fen to the island and from there to the footpath, although bicycle riders pedalled across Sheep’s Green or along the river, in the nighttime darkness of half past six on a cold November morning the killer could have been fairly certain that no witness would come upon the beating and strangulation of Elena Weaver. At half past six in the morning no one would even be in the area, except her stepmother. And her presence had been eliminated with a simple call placed on the Ceephone, a call made by someone who presumed on a personal knowledge of Justine to assume that, given the opportunity, she wouldn’t run by herself the next morning.

Of course, she had run anyway. But it was the killer’s luck that she had chosen a different route. If, indeed, it had been luck at all.

Lynley pushed himself off the railing and walked across the footbridge onto the island. A tall wooden gate leading to the north end stood open, and Lynley entered to see a work-shed with punts piled to one side of it and three old bicycles leaning against its green doors. Inside, bundled in heavy pullovers against the cold, three men were examining a hole in a punt. Fluorescent lights along the ceiling yellowed their skin. The scent of marine varnish made a weight of the air. It wafted from a crowded workbench where two gallon cans stood open with paintbrushes resting across their tops. It spread from two other punts, freshly refurbished, that rested on sawhorses, waiting to dry.

“Bloomin idiots, they are,” one of the men was saying. “Lookit this bash, will you? It’s carelessness, that is. They none of them have a stitch of respect.”

One of the other men looked up. Lynley saw that he was young-no more than twenty. His face was spotty, his hair was long, and his earlobe sported a glittering zircon stud. He said, “Help you, mate?”

The other two ceased working. They were middle-aged and tired-looking. One gave Lynley a once-over look that took in his makeshift running clothes of brown tweed, blue wool, and white leather. The other went to the far end of the shed where he fi red up an electric sander and began to savage the side of a canoe.

Having seen the offi cial crime-scene notice still marking off the south end of the island, Lynley wondered why Sheehan had done nothing about this section. He discovered soon enough when the younger man said:

“No one shuts us out just ’cause some slag’s in the shit.”

“Leave off, Derek,” the older man said. “It’s a killing they’re dealing with, not some lady in distress.”

Derek tossed his head derisively. He pulled a cigarette from his blue jeans and lit one with a kitchen match which he threw to the fl oor, casually oblivious of the proximity of several cans of paint.

Identifying himself, Lynley asked if any of them had known the dead girl. Just that she was from the University, they told him. They had no more information than what the police had given them upon their arrival at the workshop yesterday morning. They knew only that a college girl’s body had been found on the south end of the island, with her face mashed up and some string round her neck.

Had the police conducted a search of this northern area? Lynley wanted to know.

“Poked their faces everywhere, they did,” Derek replied. “Cut right through the gate before we even got here. Ned was right cheesed off about that all day.” He shouted through the noise that screeched from the sander at the end of the building, “Weren’t you, mate?”

If he heard him, Ned gave no sign. He was fully intent upon the canoe.

“You noticed nothing out of the ordinary?” Lynley said.

Derek blew cigarette smoke from his mouth and sucked it up with his nostrils. He grinned, apparently pleased with the effect. “You mean aside from about two dozen coppers crawling round through the bushes trying to pin what they can on blokes like us?”

“How’s that?” Lynley asked.

“It’s the regular story. Some college tart got bagged. The coppers are looking to nab a local because if the University nits don’t like the nature of the collar, all hell’s go’n to break loose. Just ask Bill here how it works.”

Bill didn’t appear to be willing to hold forth on this particular topic. He busied himself at the workbench where he picked up a hacksaw and went after a narrow piece of wood being held steady by an old red vice.

Derek said, “His boy works on the local rag, he does. Was following a story ’bout some bloke who supposably offed himself last spring. Uni didn’t like the way the story was developing and bang on the button they tried to quash it straight away. That’s the way it runs round here, mister.” Derek stabbed a dirty thumb in the direction of the centre of town. “Uni like the locals to toe the Uni line.”

“Isn’t that sort of thing dead and gone?” Lynley asked. “I mean the town-and-gown strife.”

Bill finally spoke. “Depends on who you ask.”

Derek added, “Yeah. It’s dead and gone, all right, when you’re talking with the toffs down river. They don’t see trouble till it smacks them in the face. But it’s a bit different, isn’t it, when you’re rubbing your elbows with the likes of us.”

Lynley gave thought to Derek’s words as he walked back to the south end of the island and ducked under the established police line. How often had he heard variations on that theme espoused religiously over the last few years?

We’ve no class system any longer, it’s dead and gone. It was always stated with well-meaning sincerity by someone whose career, whose background, or whose money effectively blinded him to the reality of life. While all the time those without brilliant careers, those without family trees whose roots plunged deeply into British soil, those without access to ready money or even the hope of saving a few pounds from their weekly pay, those were the people who recognised the insidious social strata of a society that claimed no strata existed at the very same moment as it labelled a man from the sound of his voice.

The University would probably be the fi rst to deny the existence of barriers between gown and town. And why would they not? For those who are the primary architects of ramparts rarely, if ever, feel constricted by their presence.

Still, he had difficulty attributing Elena Weaver’s death to the resurrection of a social dispute. Had a local been involved in the killing, his instincts told him that the very same local would have been involved with Elena. But no local had known her from what he had been able to ascertain. And following any pathway that led towards town-and-gown promised, he felt certain, to be a search for nothing.

He walked along the trail of boards which the Cambridge police had laid down from the island’s wrought iron gate to the site of the murder. Everything that constituted potential evidence had been swept up and carted away by the crime-scene team. Only a roughly shaped fire ring remained, half-buried in front of a fallen branch. He went to this and sat.

Whatever difficulties existed within the political arena of Cambridge Constabulary’s forensic department, the crime-scene team had done their job well. The ashes from the fi re ring had been sifted through. It looked as if some of them had even been removed.

Next to the branch, he saw the impression of a bottle in the damp earth and he remembered the list of items which Sarah Gordon had said she had seen. He wondered about this, picturing a killer clever enough to use an unopened wine bottle, to dump the wine in the river afterwards, to wash the bottle inside and out, to tamp it into the earth so that it looked like part of the general rubbish in the area. Smeared with mud, it would appear to have been there for weeks. Moisture inside would be attributed to the damp. Filled with wine, it suited the still-limited description of the weapon which had been used to beat the girl. But if that was the case, how on earth were they to trace a bottle of wine in a city where students kept supplies of drink in their very own rooms?

He shoved himself off the branch and walked to the clearing where the body had been hidden. Nothing was left to indicate that yesterday morning a pile of leaves had camouflaged a killing. Bladder campion, English ivy, nettles, and wild strawberries remained untrampled, despite the fact that every leaf on every plant had been scrutinised and evaluated by people trained to ferret out the truth. He moved to the river and gazed across the wide expanse of marshy land that constituted Coe Fen along whose far edge the beige rise of the buildings of Peterhouse lay. He studied them, admitting the fact that he could see them clearly, admitting that at this distance their lights-especially the light from one building’s lantern cupola-would probably glow visibly through all but the most impenetrable fog. He admitted also that he was checking out Sarah Gordon’s story. He admitted also that he could not have said why.

He began to turn from the river and caught on the air the unmistakable, sour smell of human vomit, just a solitary whiff of it like the breath of an illness that was passing by. He tracked this to its source on the bank, a coagulating pool of greenish brown slop. It was lumpy and foul, with the tracks and the peck-marks of birds sinking into it. As he bent to examine it, he could hear Sergeant Havers’ laconic comment: Her neighbours cleared her, Inspector, her story checks out, but you can always ask her what she had for brekkie and cart this in to forensic for a check-out as well.

Perhaps, he thought, that was the problem he was having with Sarah Gordon. Everything about her story checked out completely. There wasn’t a hole anywhere.

Why do you want a hole? Havers would have asked. Your job isn’t to want holes. Your job is to find them. And when you can’t fi nd them, you just move on.

He decided to do so, following the trail of boards back the way he had come, leaving the island. He walked up the rise in the path that led up to the causeway bridge where a gate gave way to the pavement and the street. Directly across from it was a similar gate, and he went to see what lay beyond it.

A morning jogger, he realised, coming along the river from the direction of St. Stephen’s would have three options upon reaching Fen Causeway. A turn to the left and she would run past the Department of Engineering in the direction of Parker’s Piece and the Cambridge Police Station. A turn to the right and she would head towards Newnham Road and, if she persisted far enough, to Barton beyond it. Or, he now saw, she could proceed straight ahead, crossing the street, ducking through this second gate, and continuing south along the river. Whoever killed her, he realised, must have not only known her route but also known her options. Whoever killed her, he realised, had known in advance that the only certain chance of catching her was at Crusoe’s Island.

He was feeling the cold beginning to seep through his clothes and he headed back the way he had come, maintaining a slower pace this time, one designed merely to keep himself warm. As he made the final turn from Senate House Passage where Senate House itself and the outer walls of Gonville and Caius College were acting like a refrigerated wind tunnel, he saw Sergeant Havers emerging from the gate-house of St. Stephen’s, looking dwarfed by its turrets and its heraldic carving of yales supporting the founder’s coat of arms.

She gave his appearance a poker-faced scrutiny. “Going undercover, Inspector?”

He joined her. “Don’t I blend in with the environment?”

“You’re a regular bit of camoufl age.”

“Your sincerity overwhelms me.” He explained what he had been doing, ignoring the cocked and leery eyebrow which she raised at his references to Sarah Gordon’s corroborative vomit, and finishing with, “I’d say Elena ran the course in about five minutes, Havers. But if she was intent on having a fairly long workout, then she may have paced herself. So ten at the extreme.”

Havers nodded. She squinted down the lane in the direction of King’s College, saying, “If the porter really saw her leave round six-fi f-teen-”

“And I think we can depend upon that.”

“-then she got to the island far in advance of Sarah Gordon. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Unless she stopped off somewhere en route.”

“Where?”

“Adam Jenn said his digs are by Little St. Mary’s. That’s less than a block from part of Elena’s run.”

“Are you saying she stopped off for a morning cuppa?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But if Adam was looking for her yesterday morning, he wouldn’t have had much trouble finding her, would he?”

They crossed over to Ivy Court, wound their way through the ubiquitous rows of bicycles, and headed towards O staircase. “I need a shower,” Lynley said.

“As long as I don’t have to scrub your back.”

When he returned from the shower, he found her at his desk, perusing the notes he had written on the previous night. She’d made herself at home, scattering her belongings across the room, one scarf on the bed, another draped across the armchair, her coat on the floor. Her shoulder bag gaped upon the desk top, spilling out pencils, chequebook, a plastic comb with missing teeth, and an orange lapel button printed with the message Chicken Little Was Right. Somewhere in this wing of the building, she’d managed to find a stocked gyp room, for she’d made a pot of tea, some of which she was pouring into a gold-rimmed cup.

“I see you’ve brought out the best china,” he said, towelling off his hair.

She tapped her finger against it. The sound snapped sharply rather than sang. “Plastic,” she said. “Can your lips endure the insult?”

“They’ll soldier through.”

“Good.” She poured a cup for him. “There was milk as well, but there were white globs floating in it so I left its future to science.” She dropped in two sugar cubes, stirred the brew with one of her pencils, and handed him the cup. “And would you please put on a shirt, Inspector? You’ve got lovely pectorals, but I tend to go light-headed at the sight of a man’s chest.”

He obliged her by completing the dressing which he’d begun in the icy bathroom down the corridor. He took his tea to the armchair where he saw to his shoes.

“What do you have?” he asked her.

She pushed his notebook to one side and swivelled the desk chair so that she was facing him. She rested her right ankle on her left knee, which gave him his first glimpse of her socks. They were red.

“We’ve got fibres,” she said, “on both armpits of her track jacket. Cotton, polyester, and rayon.”

“They could have come from something in her cupboard.”

“Right. Yes. They’re checking for a match.”

“So we’re wide open there.”

“No. Not exactly.” He saw she was holding back a satisfied smile. “The fibres were black.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. My guess is that he dragged her by the armpits onto the island and left the fi bres that way.”

He swam by that hook of potential culpability. “What about the weapon? Have they made any headway with what was used to beat her?”

“They keep coming up with the same description. It’s smooth, it’s heavy, and it left no trace deposit on the body. The only change in what we knew before is that they’ve moved off calling it your standard blunt object. They’ve deleted the adjectives, but they’re looking like the dickens for some others. Sheehan was talking about bringing in help to have a go with the body because apparently his two pathologists have a history of being incapable of coming to a clear conclusion-not to mention an agreement-on anything.”

“He indicated there might be trouble with forensic,” Lynley said. He thought about the weapon, pondered the location, and said, “Wood seems possible, doesn’t it, Havers?”

As usual, she was with him. “An oar, you mean? A paddle?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Then we’d have trace evidence. A splinter, a speck of varnish. Something left behind.”

“But they’ve absolutely nothing?”

“Not a sprat.”

“That’s hell.”

“Right. We’re nowhere with trace evidence if we’re hoping to build a case out of that. But there’s good news otherwise. Lovely news, in fact.” She brought forth several folded sheets of paper from her shoulder bag. “Sheehan fielded the autopsy results while I was there.

We may not have trace, but we’ve got ourselves a motive.”

“You’ve been saying that ever since we met Lennart Thorsson.”

“But this is better than being turned in for sexual harassment, sir. This is the real thing. Turn him in for this and he’s had it for good.”

“Turn him in for what?”

She handed him the report. “Elena Weaver was pregnant.”