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Prologue
AMIENS, FRANCE
May 20th, 1990
IT RAINED AS MAURICE DUVAL DROVE HIS BATTERED BLUE Peugeot through the gate behind Place Saint Michel, onto the crackling gravel drive which skirted the cathedral and the ancient Bishop’s Palace. As he neared the palace, Maurice dropped his cigarette through the open window. The rain was falling fiercely. The white stone window frames glimmered dimly between muddy brick. The wet slate roof shimmered through the trees. Maurice cut the engine and the car crawled to a stop.
Behind the falling rain, the sound of organ music swelled the evening air. Someone was practicing late, he thought. The night watchman was nowhere to be seen. Maurice slipped his porkpie hat onto his head and took the pistol out again, to check the ammunition,
to calm himself.
Above the southern wing of the palace, the rose of the cathedral’s transept window glowed red and cobalt blue. In a year or more the renovation of the palace would be finished, and a trade school would replace the emptiness. But Maurice knew that to the
farmers and fishermen of the province the building would always remain the Bishop’s Palace. The emblem of Picardie was a snail, after all, and despite its name a bishop had not slept within the residence for a hundred years. The windows were boarded shut, the walls emblazoned with graffiti. He closed the car door noiselessly and headed for the southern wing.
A cement mixer stood by the door leading down into the basement. Maurice hesitated. Was he too late? He pulled a flashlight from his jacket and turned it on. The basement door was closed but he could clearly see a piece of paper wadding stuffed beside the bolt. The organ music had stopped. Cold rain washed the palace walls. He pressed his elbow to his side to feel the gun again. Then he opened the door and stepped inside.
The air in the basement was sweet with Noviganth and other chemicals. Empty Kronenbourg beer bottles lay strewn across the floor and on the dusty windowsills which faced the outer palace square. Maurice moved through the room, illuminating the corners
with his flashlight. He had almost reached the door leading up into the palace when he saw the hole. It had been neatly concealed behind a pile of earth, cut in the ground right at the foot of the southern wall. He walked slowly across the basement wing and shone
the flashlight down into the opening. A piece of corrugated iron partially blocked the shaft, but he could still make out a kind of tunnel, hemmed in by stones. He tossed his hat on the ground and began to kick the dirt roughly to the side.
It took him only a few minutes to lift the corrugated iron high enough for him to slip down into the opening. He moved headfirst, the flashlight bouncing in his hand as he dragged himself along on his belly. Suddenly the organ music echoed up the passage, and
he realized he was moving underneath the cobbled road between the palace and the great cathedral. He crawled forward for another fifteen meters in this fashion when he sensed the air grow fresher about his face. The stone tunnel turned abruptly to the left.
Then, just as suddenly, it opened onto a larger corridor below him. He shone the flashlight through the darkness. The floor of the corridor was a good two-meter
drop from the mouth of the tunnel.
Maurice lowered himself carefully down into the corridor. As he turned, he saw the lintel of a narrow doorway to his left. It led into a small room, a closet really, around which ran a low stone bench.
Beyond the closet the corridor curved sharply to the right. Maurice started slowly up the darkened passage. The music seemed louder now, and for the first time he realized that it was not particularly good, just a patternless series of notes, an endless repetition.
He turned the flashlight off and crouched clumsily against the wall. Someone else was in the passage up ahead.
Whoever he was, wherever he was, the stranger moved quietly. Then he stopped.
Perhaps a minute passed before Maurice could hear the stranger move again. There was the sound of cloth on cloth, of metal on stone. He switched the flashlight on, aiming it into the darkness like a weapon.
A man’s face turned to face the glare, his arms laden with objects—a book, a scroll, a golden cross. His eyes were charged with terror as he leapt into the light. Maurice pulled out his gun just as the cross descended, glittering. The flashlight tumbled from his
hand, dragging the darkness down. He pulled the trigger to the sound of breaking glass.
There was a dull thud as the two men came together, and then the cold retreating echo of a cry.
“That was close.” Father Marchelidon lifted his hands from the keyboard. He glanced through the opening in the wall of the organ room to the cathedral floor below.
The sound of thunder followed. “Did you hear that?”
The bearded man beside him shrugged. “The wind,” he suggested. “Thunder and wind.”
“It sounded like a scream,” the priest said.
“Someone heard your playing.” The bearded ma laughed and clamped an arm about his companion’s narrow shoulders. “The ghost of Antoine Avernier, no doubt. Have I told you the story of his death? It’s one of my best. He carved the choir stalls, you know.”
“Save it for the tourists, Guy.” The priest looked down again into the dark basilica. Nothing stirred and yet the shadows seemed a little longer, the cathedral colder.
The night watchman shone his flashlight through the windshield of the blue Peugeot. He had not noticed it pull in, and this worried him. It was his boss’s car.
“Maurice?” The rain fell heavily from the darkness above, stinging his eyes. There was no answer.
“Maurice.” He shone his flashlight round the square and sighed. It was a lonely job, night watchman, not suited to his friendly temperament, his unfashionable sense of camaraderie.
He turned from the car and began to walk back toward the Bishop’s Palace. The basement door was slightly ajar. He ran his fingernails along the gap. This was unusual. This was wrong.
With another sigh he leaned down, careful to support his back, and picked up a piece of rain-soaked scrap wood from the ground. If it were the Flichy boys again, he would need it. They had evil temperaments, he thought, unsuited to anything but petty crime and
pimping. They would end up dead someday, not just dead but casual dead, in an alley, in an oily harbor with their pockets empty. He opened the door.
Perhaps he had had too much again. But it was cold for May, he told himself. And besides, his bottle was his only stalwart friend these days, the only ally left. The light bounced off the far wall and returned. He scanned the basement carefully, the corners and the windowsills. Then he smiled and called out loudly once again, “Maurice.” There was no answer. He checked the door to the main part of the palace. It was locked. He turned away and in that movement he resolved, as he had done already twice that month, that
he would leave the bottle home next time. He was too old to rely upon his reflexes alone, to think his instincts would preserve him as they had done in Vietnam and in Algeria. The breaking of a twig had saved him once, the splinter of a palm across the path. But the Flichy boys would never give him that. They were too cautious, and providence had left his life a droplet at a time.
The night watchman moved back through the basement room, not once aware of the two hands which pushed the dirt up slowly from below, until the hole in which Maurice had vanished only thirty minutes earlier had disappeared from view, until the ground was
smooth and featureless and almost all was as it had been.
Part One
Chapter One
LONDON
August 10th, 1991
WAS LATE, OR EVERYONE ELSE WAS EARLY ONCE again. Nigel Lyman dug his elbows into his sides and leaned into the morning, moving with the cadence of a
military parade. He was not a particularly tall man, but there was a solidity about his body, a tightness of the neck and shoulders, that lent itself by nature to this kind of grim, determined walk. He moved as if to prove the definition of a line.
A fierce breeze plucked the rain, and as Lyman walked he pointed his umbrella at a dozen different clouds, jabbing at the fickle wind. The sidewalk was almost empty. Most of the city was at work already, save for a few resilient shoppers, the tardy secretaries, the
intentionally lost. The street coursed dreamily along, the shop walls rising to the rain, the gray slate roofs and grayer sky of London.
Lyman turned off the street and entered the police station. A small crowd waited by the lift. He passed them with a terse hello, and noticed—as he headed for the stairwell at the back—that a line of water trailed his wet umbrella down the hall. It was going to be one of those days, again.
He took the steps two at a time, trying to ignore the dark familiar landmarks of the first few floors, the sergeant constable on duty, the holding cells, the paperwork
policemen, where Dotty Taylor worked with rows and rows of numbers in accounting.
When he reached the fourth floor, he stopped and took his scarf and coat off, dropping them delicately across a battery of pipes near the door. Then he hung up his umbrella, the bent spoke closest to the wall. No one gave him much more than a passing glance
as he entered the office, but Lyman knew they registered his presence. It was almost ten A.M. Some were just too polite, he thought, too bloody shy, or too embarrassed to say anything. Some really didn’t care.
And then there were the rest, who hoped that one day his apparent lack of gumption would be noticed but who refused to drag his failings from the shadows by themselves, afraid perhaps that adding peccadillos to his already damning sins might seem vindictive.
He walked between the rows of desks. Eight policemen shared the office, and most sat with their faces turned away, trying not to look at Lyman. Some read reports with studied concentration. Some talked in whispers on the telephone.
Lyman sat down at his metal desk. It was the tidiest in the room, the surface empty save for an ancient telephone, an ashtray, and a battered old PC.
“Starting early,” Inspector Blackwell said beside him. Lyman turned, facing Blackwell and the open window. It was always open, sun or snow. He reached into
his pocket, removed a tin of licorice, and popped one in his mouth.
“By the by,” continued Blackwell, “Chief Superintendent Cocksedge wants to see you. As soon as you come in. Hello. Are you there?”
Lyman frowned. “When did Cocksedge poke around?”
“Poke?” Blackwell’s eyebrows seemed to skate across his forehead. “The detective chief superintendent does not poke. His representatives may poke. He delegates. He confers.”
“Just answer the question, Blackwell.”
“He sent the Lemur down at nine.”
“Thanks,” Lyman answered in a kind of cough. His head hurt. It had hurt since late last night, or even longer. He pushed his chair away from the desk. “I won fifty pounds in the football pool yesterday,”
Blackwell crowed.
Lyman ran his fingers through his hair. It was still thick, just grayer round the edges, like burnt paper.
“Good for bloody you.”
“Now I can pay you back that twenty quid.”
Lyman straightened his suit jacket. “Wrong again, Blackwell. It’s I owe you.”
Inspector Blackwell smiled. “There you go,” he said.
“Clever lad. And when exactly, if I may ask, are you going to pay me?”
Lyman glanced down at his shoes. They were soaked through. He turned and headed for the door.
“Give him our best,” Blackwell called after him.
“And don’t forget my money.”
Detective Chief Superintendent of Police Brian R. Cocksedge, late of the Royal Navy, was fond of quoting Siegfried Sassoon in a dramatic baritone whenever he was struck by the oppressive realization that Man was, comparatively speaking, barely out of the trees of Africa. At times, especially when he had been upstaged again by the New Scotland Yard, he would stand firmly in the doorway of his office, pitching his voice at no one in particular. “ ‘When the first man,’ ” he’d cry, “ ‘who wasn’t quite an ape/Felt magnanimity and prayed for more,/The world’s redemption stood, in human shape,/With darkness done and betterment before.’ ”
Nigel Lyman reflected on this as he waited for the lift. He had never really cared for Siegfried Sassoon. To him redemption was a dubious exercise, an almost Arthurian quest, one which had little to do with real human motivation, and therefore even less to do with
crime.
He pressed the button for the lift again and uttered a faithless prayer that the chief superintendent was not in one of his discoursing moods again. Indeed, he
thought, given a choice between a grim oration and a short farewell, he would prefer the door. What else could it mean? he asked himself. It was amazing he had lasted quite this long. The lift doors creaked open. The chief superintendent’s secretary, Mrs. Clanger,
eyed him with a codlike, blinkless stare. “Ah, Mr. Lyman,” she said. “Are you absolutely sure you have the time? I mean, after all.” She looked at her widefaced watch.
Lyman tried to usher up the smile of a conspirator. “Sorry I’m late. I had an early meeting across the river.”
Mrs. Clanger did not soften. A moment passed, and finally she poked her vintage intercom and announced his presence.
“Right. Send him through,” the chief superintendent bellowed in response.
Lyman walked briskly across the room and opened the door. The chief superintendent’s office was cluttered and ill lit, but Lyman took in the details with a single practiced glance: an overfull metal file cabinet; a faded rose-and-foliage shade atop a standing lamp; several photographs in neat walnut frames, mostly old navy friends and famous personages; a sizable portrait of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, artist unknown;
a rugger ribbon; an honorary degree from Bristol University; green curtains, standard issue; and a massive coatrack and umbrella stand, barely visible beneath several coats of various weights and textures.
Detective Chief Superintendent Cocksedge stood at the window behind his desk, staring out into the wet gray street. Lollipop crosswalk lights blinked on and off below, lending his already waxy countenance an orange patina. “Nasty, isn’t it,” he said, pulling at his
narrow mustache.
“All week,” Lyman answered.
“Yes. All week.” Suddenly Cocksedge turned fully round. His face was long and pale, with a pair of creases running up and down both sides of his forehead, like poorly sewn seams. “Good for pike fishing though, eh, Lyman?” He took a reluctant step toward
his desk. “It says here you’re a . . .” His hand flipped through a file. “A ‘fisherman of some experience,’ whatever that means. Surely every boy in England
over five years old is a fisherman of ‘some experience.’ What do those people in personnel do all day? It’s beyond me, I’m sure.”
Lyman remained silent.
Chief Superintendent Cocksedge sighed loudly. He pulled his chair out and sat formally behind his desk.
“I’ll be honest with you, Lyman. You’re in a bloody mess.”
“I know, sir.”
The chief superintendent raised a hand. “Don’t interrupt me, dammit. I’m trying to help you, Lyman. I’m on your side.” He turned to the beginning of what Lyman gathered was his file.
There was that picture of his ex-wife, Jackie, on her old bicycle, Lyman noticed. It was stapled to a set of crinkled yellow pages. Personnel always used yellow for dependents. Lyman wondered if there were some logic to the color.
“Now,” the chief superintendent continued. “There are certain gentlemen here at City of London and at Metropolitan who are of the opinion that Nigel Lyman’s talents are on the wane, that after a promising beginning he has fiddled away his career.” He scanned Lyman’s face. “I am not one of them,” he added gravely. “Of course, I won’t pretend to understand your personal feelings concerning that ghastly business in the Falklands. Frankly, and I say this as a father as well as a former officer in Her Majesty’s Navy, I don’t believe it should have anything to do with the business at hand, with getting the job done. The Falklands war was nine years ago. Think of the boys who died last year and this year in Kuwait. Your son’s death, tragic as it was, was but one part of the price we all pay for decency in this country.”
“Yes, sir.” Inspector Lyman looked beyond the window. He had never even known where the Falklands were before Peter had enlisted. He had only known the name from reading it on those little plastic tags clipped to the lamb his butcher sold in Golders Green. One of
Jackie’s cousins had once visited the South Atlantic islands. She had even sent some picture postcards back, but Lyman could not remember if they were still down in the cellar, in that box, or if his ex-wife had removed them with the rest of her belongings.
Jackie had gone back to Winchester after the divorce. The Falklands war was all but forgotten. Now everyone obsessed about Iraq. And all that remained
of Peter was his little mongrel, George, who had found his roundabout way back to Lyman. Jackie hadn’t wanted him. He shed too much. He ruined her clothes. He too was now superfluous.
“On the other hand,” the chief superintendent added, chopping a hand through the air, “if the personal life of one of my men interferes with his work, then I am forced to take a position. And believe you me, when I take a position, I do so with vigor. Am I
making myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Lyman said.
“I took a risk with you, Lyman. I did your uncle a favor. A lot of people thought that I was being bloody silly, taking in a country constable, despite your success with that so-called College Killer. What am I meant to tell them now?”
“That they were right, perhaps.”
“Don’t be an ass, Lyman. Buck up. Pull yourself together.”
Lyman realized with a start that the chief superintendent was a desperate man. He scowled behind his desk, meshing his narrow fingers like a pair of combs, then pulling them apart. If Cocksedge fell, it would be from greater heights, and this is what concerned him. The City of London Police were traditionally an indigenous brood. Cocksedge had been somewhat daring in his hiring of Lyman, although it had really been
the public and the press who had authorized the move. For Lyman had once enjoyed a fortnight in the sun, after the daring capture of a history teacher who had systematically dismembered several young boys at a prestigious public school in Hampshire. The “Case of the College Killer,” as the Daily Mail had called it, had thrown the young inspector live into the hungry crowd. With his newfound notoriety and Jackie’s passion for the city, he had moved to London, forever silencing the editorials and all the righteous politicians
who had growled, “Why aren’t there any Nigel Lymans solving crimes here in London?” He had come and been forgotten, his flirtation with the people but a summer romance after all. “I’m sorry, sir,” Lyman answered finally. “Of course you can’t say that.”
The chief superintendent settled back in his chair, a faint smile pulling at his lips. “Now, about this Crosley matter,” he added softly. “Why don’t you tell me, in your own words, exactly what happened, so that we can settle this thing once and for all. Sit down. Take
your time.”
Lyman pulled a chair up beside the desk. “Thank you, sir,” he said. He reached into his jacket and removed a pack of Players cigarettes. “May I?” The chief superintendent nodded. Lyman packed a cigarette with care.
“It wasn’t just an ordinary case,” he said, striking a match and lighting up. “That’s why we were armed, according to the directive.” A blue sigh of smoke rolled across the desk. “First there was that blond girl with the gardening trowel in her chest. And then all those
others.”
Cocksedge grunted an acknowledgment. Lyman told him of the investigation. His voice was calm, devoid of emphasis.
“We thought it was Spendlove all along—Crosley especially. There was something about him neither of us felt quite right about.”
He took a long drag off his cigarette, remembering.
“We went to pick him up on Friday morning.”
“Who’s we? Be specific, man.”
“Constable Crosley and I, Detective Sergeant Thompson, and Constable John Sykes. Thompson and Sykes stayed downstairs, watching the window, while Crosley and I went upstairs. At first everything went smoothly. Spendlove appeared as if he’d been expecting us. We showed him the warrant and he just fell apart, crying and pulling at his hair. He looked spent.”
“Why wasn’t he handcuffed?”
“We were about to when he bolted for the door. Crosley ran after him.”
“What did you do?”
“First I shouted down to Sykes and told him what had happened. Then I followed Geoffrey—Constable Crosley, I mean. He had tackled Spendlove on the landing. It was then I saw the knife. Spendlove must have hidden it in his jacket. I was too far away to help, so I drew my gun and shouted out the warning.”
Lyman paused. He took a final puff from his cigarette and snapped the burning head off in the ashtray on the desk.
The chief superintendent swiveled in his chair. “Go on,” he said.
“Then they both got up. Spendlove was on the far side of the landing, with Crosley caught between us. That’s when Spendlove stabbed him.”
“Is that all? Wasn’t Crosley armed? The suspect was clearly dangerous.”
Lyman nodded. “Yes, he was armed,” he answered dreamily. “I had my weapon trained on Spendlove. I remember that. I was just about to squeeze the trigger when Sergeant Thompson fired. People had already started looking out their doors. It was a bit of a riot after that, sir, I’m afraid.”
“I see,” Cocksedge said. “I understand.” He nodded firmly. “You never had a clear shot, is that it? You couldn’t pick him off while they were struggling.” Lyman nodded. “Yes, that was it. I couldn’t really see. He was a good lad, Crosley. Too young to die like that.”
“Of course he was,” Cocksedge answered angrily.
“But he knew what his job was. He knew the risks. Don’t go blaming yourself now.” The chief superintendent shook his head. “He was about your son’s age, wasn’t he? Yes, I thought so. It wasn’t your fault, Lyman. It was just bad luck. The question is, of course,
what now?”
“Sir? A review, I suppose.”
“Do you? Well, don’t suppose. Let me do the supposing. That’s my job. I don’t think we need a review. It seems pretty clear to me. Crosley didn’t use his gun, did he? That mistake cost him his life.” Cocksedge reached unceremoniously across his desk and pushed a button on the intercom. “Where’s Randall, Mrs. Clanger?”
“Out here, sir,” crackled the reply.
“Well, send him in. I haven’t got all day.”
The chief superintendent stared at Lyman with a flat, mishandled smile. Lyman felt he should respond, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He had expected a dismissal, or a suspension at the very least. Now Cocksedge did not even want to open a review.
Lyman heard the door behind him open, and then the almost soundless, precious patter of familiar footsteps. It was the Lemur, Superintendent Terry Randall. Lyman stood.
Superintendent Randall was a tiny compact man with curly light brown hair and a pronounced jaw. It was this almost simian aspect of his countenance that had earned him his nickname; that and his quick ascent of the police department’s hierarchy. Just as the
lemur had survived the age of dinosaurs, so Randall had succeeded where his senior but ungainly competition had succumbed.
“Right,” Cocksedge added, waving Randall to the side. “I think the best thing in a case like this is to push on. There’ll be some ugly talk for a while. That’s only natural. But I’m sure you’ll manage. Won’t he, Terry?” The Lemur nodded. “Yes, sir. Like riding a horse.”
“Exactly,” Cocksedge said. “You have to get back on and forge ahead. All this mooning about will only serve to raise more questions.”
“And nobody wants that,” the Lemur said. “Do they, Lyman?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Then we’re all agreed,” Cocksedge said.
“The first thing to do is put you on another case. You were on that Pontevecchio suicide last year, weren’t you? That Italian banker who hanged himself off Blackfriars Bridge.”
“Not exactly, sir. I heard that I might be assigned, but the inquest was closed by the time the official word came through.”
“Of course. Well, some silly judge has reopened the case and he’s given us another inning. Apparently he thinks the inquest was closed too soon. Terry has the details. He’ll give you the files. And you might want to have a chat with Hadley too, if you can pry him loose from his damn garden. Hadley was the one in charge. Did a fine job, if you ask me. But of course, no one does.”
“Yes, sir.” Lyman began to move back toward the door.
“By the way,” Cocksedge added. “You speak Italian, don’t you?”
Lyman looked surprised. “No, sir. Some French. My mother was from Brittany.”
“Quite. I knew it was a Romance. Well, brush up on your damned Italian. You may need it. That’ll be all.” The Lemur opened the door and Lyman started out, his head in a spin. He barely saw the sour face Mrs. Clanger made as he walked by. The lift arrived and he
stepped in like a sleepwalker, the Lemur pulling up the rear.
“Saved again, eh, Nigel?” the Lemur said.
“Don’t tell me I have you to thank.”
“Not likely. If there’s anyone to thank, I suppose it’s the famous College Killer. Without him you’d have never made the telly.”
“What are you driving at, Randall?”
The Lemur leaned against the wall, his hands knotted in the pockets of his brown wool suit. “You’re a bit thick these days, aren’t you, Lyman?” he said. “That’s the odd thing about the telly. When you’ve been on once, you bloody near belong to it. But it wouldn’t do if this Crosley business got about. The whole department would go on trial—not just you. You’re a symbol, Lyman. God help us, but you are. The people picked you. And the people never make mistakes.”
The lift opened with a creak and the Lemur started toward his office, his narrow shoulders bouncing as he walked.
Lyman moved slowly in his wake, trying to raise some passionate conviction, some righteous indignation, but his anger languished deep inside him, countered by the fear he felt, the certainty that the Lemur’s sharp appraisal had been absolutely true. He had become a symbol. But of what? The dubious detective inspector? The coward who had failed to listen when a fellow constable but half his age had cried out for the shot, had shrieked for it? “Shoot, Nigel. Bloody shoot!” Yet what if he had missed?
He hastened down the corridor and as he stepped into the Lemur’s tiny office, all he could think of was the ending of another poem Chief Superintendent Cocksedge often quoted. It was by Wilfred Owen, a writer Lyman favored to Sassoon, and it concerned the
meeting of two foot soldiers in hell, two symbols of the First World War.
“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . .”
Chapter Two
LONDON
August 10th, 1991
THE LEMUR’S OFFICE WAS ONLY HALF THE SIZE OF THE chief superintendent’s, yet to Lyman it appeared much larger. The walls were barren except for one small window and a dryboard made of light gray plastic on which the superintendent had imposed a cobweb of black lines, columns of names and numbers inscrutably attached to projects and assignments. A PC purred upon his desk. A telephone kept it company. There was nothing else, except for two tan imitation leather chairs, one just the slightest bit more padded than the other. The Lemur was already slipping into it.
“What do you know about banking?” the superintendent asked.
“I generally use postal orders myself.”
“I don’t mean banks. I mean banking, finance.” Lyman did not answer. The Lemur was barking through the telephone. “Pontevecchio, yes,” he said covering the mouthpiece and raising his eyebrows.
“Yes, all of them.” He hung up.
“Precious little, I’m afraid.”
A moment passed and a chubby girl with an armful of files appeared at the door. The Lemur motioned her forward and she slipped them carefully onto his desk. Lyman recognized her. She was one of Dotty Taylor’s friends. He had seen them sharing lunch in the Wimpy’s down the road.
The Lemur plucked a file of photographs from the pile on his desk, and tossed it to Lyman. “I’ll make this simple for you,” he said. “There were three central
players in this clever little game.” He pointed to the foremost snapshot in the file. “That first fellow with the rope about his neck is Salvatore Pontevecchio.” Lyman stared down at the photograph, wondering at the way the head was squeezed off to the side. “I remember the newspaper stories.”
“Yes, but one can’t always believe what one reads in the press.”
In the beginning, Lyman had thought the Lemur’s little barbs were cast for his exclusive pleasure. They weren’t, of course. Randall made a religion of alienation. He did it to everyone who could not help him by the way. He always had.
“I personally believe the blighter hanged himself,” the Lemur added with uncharacteristic candor. “In my opinion, the man was done for and he knew it. The file is comprehensive. I looked it over again this morning.
“Suffice it to say, Salvatore Pontevecchio was the chairman of one of the largest private banks in Italy, Banco Fabiano. By using his position at Fabiano, he was able to misappropriate vast sums of money from the numerous financial institutions he controlled in Italy, and then transfer them illegally to a motley collection of paper companies in such tax havens as Luxembourg and the Bahamas. Chinese boxes, really.
For added secrecy and protection he often used the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, commonly called the IOR or Vatican Bank, as a financial conduit to smuggle the cash out of the country. The Vatican is considered an independent state within Italy, you see, with its own laws and regulations.
“The head of the Vatican Bank at that time was—and still is, presumably through divine intervention—gentleman number two: Archbishop Kazimierz Grabowski. The banker Pontevecchio acted as economic advisor to Archbishop Grabowski. In exchange
for providing the Church with financial insights and spectacular profits, Pontevecchio obtained the secrecy of the sottane nere, the black cassocks of the Vatican.”
“A blind eye,” Lyman volunteered. He looked down at the photograph of the archbishop. Grabowski was a big man. He was standing in the street before a crowd, wearing a dark business suit and clerical collar, his arms extended as if to hold the people back, his head bowed, his eyes glaring at the camera.
“Eventually,” the Lemur continued, “the money which Salvatore Pontevecchio had transferred illegally through the Vatican Bank made its circuitous way back to Italy. Usually it was then spent in speculation on the Milan stock market, or invested in arms and narcotics. Pontevecchio and Archbishop Grabowski both made money, at least in the beginning. It was easy for them to predict when a company’s shares were on
the rise because they were the ones driving the prices up, through their shell firms overseas. Of course they had some help. To secure his position on the Banco
Fabiano board, and to protect himself politically, Pontevecchio sought the assistance of the third and final player on our list: Marco Scarcella.” The Lemur glanced at his watch. “Christ,” he said. “Look at the time.”
Lyman stared at the puffy round face of the balding gentleman in the photograph before him. Marco Scarcella wore a pair of black plastic spectacles. His eyes were small but full of life, twinkling—like the eyes they always gave to Father Christmas on those
family cartoons.
The Lemur fiddled with his papers. “Let’s see,” he said. “Marco Scarcella. Born in Pritoie, Italy. In 1936 he went to Spain as one of Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Saw some action in Albania. Then he fought against the Allies in Italy, 1943, as an SS Oberleutnant. After the war, he made his way to Argentina, where he resurfaced as a senior executive of the Perma Mattress Company. In addition to selling mattresses, Scarcella also formed a rat line for escaped Nazis and eventually became a kind of freelance national security consultant.” The Lemur looked up and smiled. “Not your average Soho slasher, eh, Lyman?”
“No, sir,” Inspector Lyman answered glumly.
“Are you following all this? Stop me if I go too fast.”
“I’ll manage,” Lyman said. “Marco Scarcella. Born in Pritoie, Italy. Fought in Albania. Smuggled Nazis to Argentina.”
“Very good.” The Lemur thrust his jaw out further.
“Scarcella was soon befriended by the great Juan Perón himself. The Argentine dictator was so impressed that he later granted the mattress salesman citizenship,
and in the seventies made him one of the country’s official economic advisors.”
“What were his duties?”
“Import-export. Balance of trade. You know. Guns and butter.”
Lyman sat up in his chair. The dull fatigue which had settled on him at the beginning of the briefing suddenly fell away. The seventies, he thought. Before the Falklands war. Guns and butter.
The Lemur continued his narration. “Eventually Scarcella returned to Italy, buying a villa in Tuscany with his savings. According to Interpol, he appeared to have retired. But it was precisely at this time that he began to construct a political and financial organization
which eventually amounted to a kind of statewithin-a-state. Working under the guise of a secret Masonic Lodge, Scarcella recruited members from the Italian military and industry, journalists and politicians, anyone of power he could influence. The lodge
was called the I Four, or—ironically—the IQ. It stood for Informazione Quattro.
“Every country has its Freemasons,” Randall added with disdain. “Even this one, I’m afraid. Of course they’re usually fairly social things, business clubs with a little mumbo jumbo in between to make everyone feel like they belong to something.”
“I had an uncle who was one.”
“Indeed. I’m not surprised. But the I Four, Lyman, was quite unique. Although the Italian postwar constitution specifically prohibits secret societies, Scarcella took this dormant pseudo-lodge and resurrected it. According to former members, he dispensed with
most of the normal, arcane rites and bestowed upon himself extraordinary powers as the lodge’s Venerable Master. Until it was exposed, Scarcella alone knew the entire membership. Very exclusive. One was asked to join. In exchange for the shortcut to money and power it provided, Scarcella demanded information—something so delicate that it would ensure the member’s loyalty, his silence.”
“Very neat.”
“Yes, very. Of course, not everyone cooperated. There’s one report in the file which concerns a Roman magistrate who was persuaded by his local priest to abandon the I Four and testify against Scarcella and the rest. Two days before the trial, the magistrate’s
youngest daughter—only twelve years old—was kidnapped by a group of Scarcella’s men, one of whom we later arrested. That’s how we got the story.” The Lemur folded his fingers together under his chin, and leaned closer to Lyman.
“According to the informant, they took the girl to a house which they had rented near a town called Terracina, halfway between Naples and Rome, on the coast. Not just any house, mind you. Scarcella was very particular about these kinds of things. It had to be in the suburbs. It could never be too close to a neighbor, in case they heard the screams. But the walls had to be thin enough to hear through.” The Lemur sighed.
“Well, they found the perfect place, apparently. As was his practice, Scarcella went upstairs and locked himself in a bedroom. He usually preferred a small room; never the master bedroom. His men, meanwhile, took the girl into the bedroom next door, where
they proceeded to rape and sodomize her repeatedly for over an hour until she lost consciousness. I’ll spare you the grim details. I’m sure it will suffice if I tell you that the leader of this crew had a peculiar talent with a razor.
“No one ever knew what Scarcella did by himself in the room next door. Somehow or other, he always heard or sensed when his victims were hovering near death, for he would suddenly appear in the doorway. The report states he was impeccably dressed on these occasions, and this night was no exception. Everyone stood aside when he came in. Scarcella walked over to the bed where the girl lay. She was barely conscious by this time. Conscious enough to be afraid, though.
Conscious enough to cry out, apparently, as Scarcella pulled the pin out of the rose he was sporting on his lapel. He just stood there over her, the flower in one hand and that bloody straight pin in the other, watching her cower on the bedsheets. Then he leaned forward, turned the rose round in his fingers, and stuffed it into her mouth, stem first, as if he were planting it inside her. That’s all he did. He left immediately thereafter, and drove straight back to Rome.”
The Lemur leaned back in his chair. “Needless to say, the girl’s father, the magistrate, never testified, and Scarcella was acquitted.
“It was just about this time that Scarcella recruited Pontevecchio. Despite their different backgrounds, both men shared a fascist sensibility, an inordinate fear of communism, and a respect for secret power. In some ways, it was almost inevitable that they should have become partners. They offered each other so much.”
“What happened to the girl?”
“What’s that?”
“The girl, the one you were just talking about.”
“As I recall, she bled to death.” He shook his head.
“Are you listening, Lyman? Pay attention, please! Marco Scarcella delivered the I Four, his political protection, and his close connection to several Latin American regimes. And in return Pontevecchio supplied the money from Banco Fabiano, and the cover of
the IOR—the discreet banking services and protecting arms of the good Archbishop Grabowski. Together the three men made millions, secretly controlling both the Italian government and much of the press, bribing or killing anyone who got in their way. It was a marriage made in heaven, or almost, anyway.”
The Lemur began to stare out of the window. It was as if he thought that Lyman needed just a few more seconds to compile the information, like the computer on his desk.
“Two events,” the Lemur added suddenly, “brought this unholy alliance to an end. The first was the exposure of Scarcella’s I Four. And the second, the collapse of Pontevecchio’s Banco Fabiano.
“In the spring of 1989,” he explained, “a French suspect revealed that Scarcella had helped finance a heroin factory near Florence, Italy. A detachment of guardia di finanza was ordered to investigate, but by the time they arrived Scarcella had already disappeared. Tipped off, I’m sure. They found nothing in his Tuscan villa. But at the offices of the local Perma Mattress factory, just a few miles away, they unearthed a list of almost one thousand I Four members. In one day the secret Masonic Lodge was stripped of its most powerful attraction—it wasn’t secret any longer. Scarcella escaped to South America.”
“Is that where he is now?” Lyman asked.
The Lemur raised an eyebrow. “No, thank God. He was spotted in May last year, in France, one month before Pontevecchio was found hanging from Blackfriars
Bridge. But the French gendarmerie let him get away. Then last September he flew to Switzerland, where he was arrested trying to withdraw some fifty-five million dollars from an account suspected of being connected to the Banco Fabiano scandal. He’s tucked
away in Champ Dollon prison now, near Geneva. The chief superintendent wants you to try and arrange an interview, but as far as I’m concerned, it probably isn’t worth the ticket. Scarcella won’t talk to anyone.”
“Is that so?”
“The collapse of Fabiano happened almost simultaneously,” the Lemur added peevishly, “resulting in the largest financial scandal in banking history. I don’t remember all of the details. There are précis in the files, newspaper clippings and the like. That’s your job, anyway.”
He looked up. “But it was really just a matter of time for Salvatore Pontevecchio. The financial hole at his Banco Fabiano grew larger and larger, until one day there was no more money left to transfer. Archbishop Grabowski pleaded ignorance, denying the IOR’s responsibility, despite the fact that the companies in which Pontevecchio had invested were owned primarily by the Church. When the statements and bank
papers were finally unraveled, it appeared that the hundreds of millions of dollars embezzled from Fabiano had simply disappeared.” The Lemur smiled darkly.
“Pontevecchio had already been to jail during an earlier scandal. It was there he tried to kill himself the first time. He knew what it was like.”
Lyman looked down once again at the photograph of the Italian banker, the bulging eyes, the skin puffed up around the nylon noose. “So Pontevecchio fled to London, is that it?”
“That’s right. In June, last year,” the Lemur said.
“Where he tried to kill himself again, except that this time he succeeded?”
“That’s what the inquest ruled, and I happen to agree. For a change. It’s your job to see if it was something else.”
“But why?”
“Why what?”
Lyman leaned forward in his chair, hunching his shoulders like the pincers of a crab. “I mean, why not Brazil or Argentina? What did Pontevecchio hope to gain in London?”
“Really, Lyman. Shall I lead you by the nose through all of this? According to another Mason named Angelo Balducci—who was his escort into London—Pontevecchio was trying to arrange a meeting with the Opus Dei, a wealthy right-wing Catholic group.”
“What for?”
“To save himself, presumably. To ask for absolution, for money, for another chance. How should I know? Balducci was arrested last year on charges of smuggling. But he claims he only helped Pontevecchio get into the country, and he has a perfect alibi.”
The superintendent began to reassemble the files before him. “Pontevecchio’s wife, who’s now living in America, reported that he telephoned her just before his death and told her everything would be all right, that he had found something wonderful and that
Archbishop Grabowski would finally have to honor his financial responsibilities. Pontevecchio was clearly on the edge, and tilting. His bank had collapsed into that hole, now one point three billion dollars wide. Scarcella would no longer protect him. Pontevecchio was a public failure, exposed. They’d dug him up, like a grub in a spadeful of earth, and he couldn’t take the light.” The Lemur slapped the top file loudly. “Justice,
Lyman. What we’re paid to mete out, hard and true.”
“I thought that was the courts’ prerogative.”
“Don’t get cheeky, Lyman. This is our second go on this one, the second inning.”
Isn’t that what Cocksedge had called it, Lyman thought—a second inning?
“Just do your standard plodding job of it and we’ll all be friends again. We’ll leave young Crosley in the customary files. Welcome aboard.”
The Lemur pushed the rest of the papers across the desk. Then he picked up the telephone and swiveled his chair away. The briefing was over.
Lyman eyed the superintendent closely. He did not feel offended by the briefing’s sudden termination, but he was nettled by the Lemur’s gracelessness. It would take little imagination to force a conversation on his secretary, yet the superintendent sat there without speaking, the receiver poised a fraction of an inch from his perfect, tiny ear.
Lyman gathered up the files and headed out the door. The corridor was filling up. It would be lunchtime soon and the world was washing up, or making plans, or working through it once again.
If Pontevecchio had died in some hotel, Lyman thought, in another part of London, the case would have gone to Scotland Yard, to the Metropolitan Police. But instead he’d hanged himself, or been the victim of a murder, beneath Blackfriars Bridge. In the public
view. In that one square mile which marked the province of the City of London Police. And yet the job seemed like a task best left to Interpol. Lyman sighed. What did he know about Italian Masonry, or finance for that matter? Why wasn’t the chief inspector in on this one? The job demanded special skills.
Lyman pushed the button for the lift and wished himself back to the Brass Monkey, the slow thick shadows of the pub which he had frequented so often as a
young policeman back in Hampshire. He tried to visualize the glassy chalk stream of the River Itchen out the window, balanced precariously on the backs of trout, the female bulging of St. Catherine’s Hill, its Saxon ditch and rampart gathering the errant trees into
a single copse of green, the ancient oaks and poplars rocking him to sleep a hundred feet above the ground, curled like a question mark about the moving branches. Sometimes he thought of going back to Winchester. But they had built a motorway around the Hill, and
half his family and friends had died or moved away. There was little point in going back, almost as little as in reminiscing.
The lift arrived and Lyman stepped in. It was nearly full. He turned his back to the crowd. Someone was wearing a florid perfume. It smelt like jasmine and Lyman thought about Dotty Taylor, the way her thighs had come together at the top and formed a triangle of light as she had walked away from him into the bathroom to wash up. It had only been twelve nights, twelve nights and thirteen days.
The doors creaked open once again, this time preceded by the clapping of a hidden bell. A young woman bundled in a scarf and raincoat stared expectantly into the lift. “Going down?” she asked.
No one answered, and for a moment Lyman heard the question as if it had been meant for him alone, a grim indictment of the last years of his life. The doors closed just as suddenly and the woman in the raincoat disappeared.
Dotty Taylor wasn’t what he needed, Lyman thought. Cocksedge had been right. Work was the answer. He had to climb back on again, but his hands were loath and cold.
HASLEMERE
August 18th, 1991
THE DARK BLUE TR4 LUNGED ACROSS THE CROWDED motorway, trying to force a space between a Jaguar and a two-ton lorry. Inside the car, Lyman kept one
hand on the wheel and the other on a tattered road map in his lap. He had never been to this part of Surrey before, but he knew the turn to Haslemere was fast approaching. Beside him, his dead son’s mongrel, George, stood with his nose half out the window, barking and chomping at the wind.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, George, shut up.” Lyman nudged him with his elbow but the animal remained transfixed. His fur was knotted and thick, the color of day-old snow.
Part Corgi and part unknown, he had indecisive ears that drooped and stood erect and drooped again as he sniffed the air outside the window.
The road curved. Lyman passed another car, and found himself within the current of a roundabout. The road signs seemed unnaturally small, pointing at the oddest angles as if they had been turned by vandals in the night. He glimpsed the one for Haslemere too late. The tires of the Triumph squealed, George barked, and Lyman swung the car around the roundabout again. It took him another twenty minutes before he reached the country road which, according to his map, would bring him to the house of former Superintendent
Hadley. The sun had disappeared behind a bank of clouds. A wind blew from the west across the fields, bending the hedgerows, tilting the trees. He passed a dairy farm and suddenly there it was, the lane which Hadley had described that morning with punctilious
detail.
The house was nestled in a little valley lush with rhododendron bushes. It was a large, neo-Tudor structure with bright white plaster walls and heavy wooden crossbeams. Lyman pulled his car up to the front and turned the motor off. At the rear of the house he could see a conservatory, and beyond that a kind of sunken garden full of rosebushes. He opened the door, mindful not to let the dog out in his wake, and headed for the entrance.
The former superintendent appeared in the open doorway, his hand extended in a greeting. “Nigel,” he said. “It’s good to see you again. I was expecting you much earlier.”
Lyman frowned. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “The roads are absolutely jammed.”
“None of that now.”
“Pardon?”
“No more sirs and superintendents left for me. Given all that up. It’s Squire Hadley now.” He laughed. Lyman tried to smile.
“Just call me Tim. I was only joking, Lyman.”
“Yes, sir. Tim.” George barked from the car and Lyman rolled his eyes. “Damn dog.”
“Well, let him out, man,” Hadley said as he bounded from the entrance. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with thinning black hair and cavernous green eyes. He had been in an auto accident as a child, and still carried the scars along his cheeks—deep-set and knotted purple lines which made his face seem more dramatic than grotesque. Perhaps it was the emerald eyes. Or perhaps it was the smile, so china perfect. Hadley opened the car door and George escaped with a growl.
“I was afraid he’d muck up your garden,” Lyman said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Good for the soil. You should see how much I pay for dung each year.” Hadley looked up at the sky. “Why don’t we walk for a bit,” he said. “I’d invite you in but the Mrs. isn’t feeling up to visitors.”
“Of course.”
Hadley grinned again and Lyman thought that it had been a long time since he’d seen him smile that way. And there it was again, twice in a day, in a moment. There had been a time once, Lyman remembered, soon after his arrival on the force, when he and Hadley had almost become friends. Hadley—then only a chief inspector—had taken the country constable under his wing, at first no doubt to share in the warm glow of the reporters’ cameras whenever they came to interview the man who had caught the infamous College Killer. But after a while, the more they worked together, the more they found they had in common. Hadley frequently assigned the young inspector to his cases, tutoring
him with care, introducing him to his most reliable informers. And so it was that in the first year of his tenure with the City of London Police, Lyman solved more crimes than anyone of his rank in the history of the department.
Then something happened that Lyman had never really understood. Hadley was promoted to superintendent, and almost overnight he withdrew from everyone with whom he had hitherto shared his life, including Lyman. It was as if the previous years had only been a preparation for this inevitable ascension. He joined a different set of clubs. He bought a bigger car. He moved into another flat, in a different part of town. He met the woman who would soon be Mrs. Hadley. “Butterflies don’t mix with caterpillars,” they said around the office.
Five months later Hadley was assigned to the Pontevecchio case. And then, upon completion of the inquest, the brand-new superintendent astounded everyone with the news that he was going to retire, ten years before his time. His wife had come into some money, it was said, and he planned to buy a house in Surrey and raise flowers.
Others were less kind, insisting that the superintendent had been sacked, the victim of a power play with Cocksedge. Informal parties were arranged to bid him bon voyage. Lyman had attended these religiously, but each time he had tried to tell the superintendent what a debt of gratitude he felt, Hadley had only shaken his
head and pulled away.
In a few weeks, Hadley was forgotten practically by everyone. It was his job now that concerned them, the struggle to fill the impending vacuum. Some said
the Lemur was the obvious replacement. After all, Randall had seniority, and a fine record of arrests. But he was not well liked. Others insisted Lyman had a chance.
In truth, Lyman had never really cared about the race. He liked his job just as it was, and he did not fancy the idea of spending his career behind a desk on the fifth floor. So when he finally heard the news of Randall’s imminent promotion, he felt relieved that he had not been chosen, although one thing distressed him. They said that the deciding vote against him had been cast by Superintendent Hadley; it was his last official act.
Lyman and Hadley crossed the driveway and headed round the house toward the conservatory. Neither of them had spoken for several minutes when suddenly Hadley said, “So what exactly do you want to know, about the case I mean?”
Lyman was looking at a bed of heather. The lavender branches were thick with tiny spines. “I thought perhaps that you might . . . I don’t know, fill in the empty spaces.”
“What did Brian tell you?”
“Not much. Randall briefed me.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Your findings. Your results, man. Your analysis. Was it a suicide or wasn’t it?”
“I have no idea. I’ve only just begun.” Hadley nodded grimly. “I see. Yes, well, I suppose that’s sensible. You’d want to go in with an open mind and all that. Only natural. Who are your prime suspects then, if I may ask?”
Lyman shrugged. “Archbishop Kazimierz Grabowski, I suppose. And Marco Scarcella too.”
“Scarcella’s in prison, in Switzerland. And he’s an old man now.”
“Yes, so I heard. But he wasn’t in prison when Pontevecchio died, in June last year. The Lemur told me Scarcella was spotted in France in May, right before Pontevecchio’s death. But it wasn’t until September that they arrested him in Switzerland.”
“Here, let me show you something,” Hadley said abruptly. He drew his hands together behind his back and hastened down the path toward the conservatory. Lyman followed.
“Are you a collector, Lyman?” Hadley said, as he fiddled with the door.
“Sir?”
“Stamps, coins—that sort of thing.”
“Oh, I see.” The glass door opened and Lyman felt a wall of warm moist air surround him. “Not really.”
“Pity,” Hadley said. “I think it gives a man something, especially when he retires. Don’t delay, Lyman.
You’ll soon be on the ash heap too. Find something, anything. Something to do. Something to hold on to.”
He strode forward. Lyman could see the racks and racks of vegetation on the walls around them, thick flowers hanging down, a drape of color on the heavy air. “Something to look after,” Hadley continued.
“Shut the door.”
Lyman stepped in.
“Orchids have always been my fancy,” Hadley said.
“I think it’s because they’re so vital, so organic. Not like the job, eh?” He picked up a leafless spray. The flowers were creamy white, suspended from a piece of corkboard on the wall. “Ghost orchids,” he said. Lyman examined a clot of leaves and petals near the
door. The flowers looked like open wounds, fleshy and exposed. Where was the soil, he wondered, or did they simply grow that way? “Very nice, yes.”
“Take a look at this one.” The superintendent pointed at another plant with verdant, palmlike leaves. A spike of flowers hung down to one side. The plant was festooned with two-inch blossoms, pale green with light brown tips, spoon-shaped and hooded like a line of monks on their way to morning prayers. “It’s a Catasetum trulla,” Hadley said. “A friend of mine imports them from South America. Isn’t it lovely? They have the oddest reproductive cycle.” He poked a fingertip into a blossom. “See? Their stamens are buried
so deep within them that over the millennia they’ve developed a kind of alkaloid which makes the bees that pollinate them drowsy. The bees fall in, you see, drunk on the nectar, and cover themselves with pollen. Some orchidologists believe the insects actually remember, returning again and again just for the drug.”
“Fascinating,” Lyman said. “About the case . . .”
“Yes, yes, the case. Well, if it wasn’t suicide,”
Hadley said, “then I’d put my money on Grabowski.” “The archbishop? Why?”
“I met His Excellency in Rome. It was during the first inquest.”
“What was he like?”
“Canadian. Big bloke. Six foot three at least. Sixteen stone. He used to play ice hockey as a boy. I suppose that’s why Pope Paul employed him as a kind of unofficial bodyguard. But he didn’t have any time for us.
He kept on saying how busy he was, how he was doing us such a big bloody favor just by seeing me. Meanwhile, all I could think of was how I knew he was born in this hovel in Toronto, on the wrong side of town. His parents were Polish, right off the bloody boat. I mean real wogs. The only reason he even went to university was because he was a priest.”
“Why would he have killed Pontevecchio?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? He wanted to cover up the Vatican Bank’s connection with Banco Fabiano after the scandal broke. Don’t think—just because he’s a priest—that he couldn’t have done it. Believe you me. He may be an archbishop, but Grabowski is no saint. He’s a banker through and through.”
Lyman nodded glumly, remembering the file on the archbishop. But at some point, he considered, at some time Grabowski must have honestly believed. In seminary perhaps, or as a parish priest in west Ontario.
How strange, Lyman thought, that a man of God should have become a banker in the end, trading as much in numbers, in proven formulae, as in the intangibles of faith. “I suppose so,” he said at last. “Then you think he knew Pontevecchio was embezzling from
Banco Fabiano.”
“He must have. They were using the Vatican Bank to get the money from Fabiano out of Italy. The government was cracking down on taxes and the Church was desperate to account for the missing funds. He was desperate.”
Suddenly George began to bark. Lyman looked up. The dog was playing in the sunken garden, chasing birds.
“Of course,” Hadley added softly, “that’s only my opinion. It’s your case now, and I wouldn’t want to influence you one way or the other.”
“Of course.” George barked again and Lyman watched in horror as the dog began to dig around a rosebush. “Sorry,” he said, dashing toward the door. He swung it open, shouting, “George. George, stop that.” The dog looked up momentarily, his paws half
buried in the ground.
Lyman shut the door behind him and walked around the conservatory. “Come here,” he said. “Come here this instant.”
The dog trotted over. Lyman raised a hand to strike him, but at the last moment he felt his anger falter. “That’s no way,” Hadley said behind him. “You’ve got to discipline them. You’ve got to let them know who’s the master.”
“Yes, I know,” Lyman said. “It’s just that when he looks up at me . . .” He could not finish.
“Spare the rod. You know what they say.”
“He’s really my son’s dog. Or was. I’m not very good with animals.”
They both glanced down at George. Then Hadley said, “I was sorry to hear about young Crosley, Nigel. He was a good policeman.”
Lyman nodded.
“Try not to take it personally. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. I’m sure you did everything you could, by the book.”
“By the book,” Lyman repeated.
“Let me give you a piece of advice, Nigel. You’ve had a hard time of it lately. I’d take this Pontevecchio case slowly, if I were you. Work back into things. Don’t push yourself. It’s really only a formality anyway.” He looked back at the conservatory. “Was there anything else you wanted?”
“Actually, I did have some questions about Scarcella.”
“Yes, of course. Scarcella. I only ask because I have to drive the Mrs. up to Guildford. It’s the music festival next week and—well, you know—she just has to have her hair done.” Hadley looked down at his watch.
“You should come out again sometime. Soon.”
“Thank you, I will. But, about Scarcella—”
“The bastard’s already in prison, where he belongs. I doubt if I can tell you anything you haven’t read in the files. Sorry I couldn’t be of any further help. Strange, isn’t it? It’s only been a year since Pontevecchio’s suicide and yet it seems so far away. Another lifetime. I hope we get to see you again. I mean that, Nigel.”
“Thanks very much. Another time then. I’ll ring you.” Lyman patted George on the head. “It was good to see you again.”
They shook hands, and started toward the driveway at the front of the house. When they reached the car, Lyman opened the passenger door and George jumped in without a fuss. “Well, thanks again,” Lyman said, searching for his keys. “I liked your flowers.”
“Think about what I said. Find a hobby. Don’t put it off. None of us is getting any younger.”
“Yes. Yes, I know,” Lyman said, ducking into the car.
“And Nigel . . .”
Lyman looked up through the window.
“Yes, sir?”
“I wasn’t sacked, you know. Just to set the record straight.”
“I never thought you were.”
“No, you wouldn’t, would you. Not Nigel Lyman.”
Hadley smiled sadly. “I made a lot of mistakes in my career, Nigel, but leaving the department wasn’t one of them.”
Hadley backed off toward the entrance of the house. Lyman turned the ignition key. The motor coughed like a sleeping child, and caught.
It had been a pointless exercise, Lyman thought, a waste of time. He had learned precious little about Pontevecchio, and even less about Scarcella. He headed down the drive, turning only once to catch a glimpse of Hadley in the rearview mirror throwing a heartless wave into the air. Then he was gone.
Lyman drove along the country road, trying to think of something other than his case, trying to forget himself within the constant uniformity of the dividing line. Black, white, black. He thought about Tim Hadley, about his orchids and the way their slender roots had dangled in the air, thirsty for moisture.
Hadley had done all right for himself with his collecting, especially for a policeman. A posh house and a garden, a wife with a taste for music festivals. No wonder he’d retired early.
The road narrowed up ahead and George began to bark once again, lunging at the window. “Quiet,” Lyman said. “Please, George.” He slowed the car. They were crossing a bridge. On the river far below, a solitary sculler cut the waterway in half, pulling at his
wooden blades, gliding on the surface through the reeds.
Excerpted from GOSPEL TRUTHS © Copyright 2009 by J.G. Sandom. Reprinted with permission by Bantam, a division of Random House. All rights reserved.
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