The Water's Lovely (26 page)

Ismay wondered why she bothered, for Beatrix took no notice but removing a lump of chewing gum from her mouth and squeezing it in her fingertips like plasticine, abandoned hymns for the Book of Revelation. ‘Blood came out of the winepress,' she remarked in quite a cheerful tone, ‘even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.'

Eva Simber was dead. Ismay repeated these words over to herself. She later felt it was to her credit that instead of rejoicing, she thought, how terrible, how awful. A woman walking her dog had found the body. The paper said police had DNA from Eva's fingernails where she had scratched her attacker but it would take some time to try to match it with any possible suspects. A second man was helping with enquiries. There was no mention of Andrew.

The police must also have been questioning him, Ismay thought. They'd be bound to talk to the boyfriend
and Andrew had been Eva's boyfriend. There was no good deceiving herself over that.

She picked up the phone and dialled Heather's mobile. She and Edmund were in a wine bar on their way home from work. ‘Did you know?'

‘Of course we knew, Issy. I knew you wouldn't – well, not at first. You never read the papers or see the news.'

‘Why didn't you tell me?'

‘I didn't want to upset you.'

‘Upset
me?'

Heather said nothing.

‘Why did you think you'd upset me? Didn't you think I'd be glad? Oh, I know I'm awful. I'm terrible being glad someone's dead. But didn't you know I'd be glad? Now she's gone Andrew will come back to me.'

‘I doubt it,' said Edmund after she had rung off.

They finished their drinks and went out. Under a shady overhanging tree Heather lifted up her face and smiled at him. He felt overwhelmed with love for her, a feeling so strong that it made him breathless. She came into his arms with a sigh of pleasure and he kissed her as passionately as if they were in their own home, away from all eyes. ‘I love you so much.'

‘Not more than I love you,' said Heather.

The street in Battersea where Ivan lived was some way from Kensington Gardens but still Pamela felt nervous walking to his house from a distant bus stop. Women are always on edge after the murder of a woman in the city where they live, even if it didn't take place on the doorstep.

Ivan had said last time they met, get a permanent live-in carer for your sister and we could get a real relationship going. She had asked him what he meant and he said, ‘Well, move in together.'

‘I'm not ready for that yet, Ivan.'

‘Why aren't you?' he said. ‘At our age we can't afford to hang about. We know how we feel about each other.'

Did they? Did
she?
‘I couldn't leave Beatrix with a carer. For one thing, I couldn't afford it.'

‘Wouldn't those selfish nieces of yours help with that? I'd be prepared to help.'

She was amazed. After the business with the minicab and his unwillingness to eat out, she had put him down as mean. His meanness had been the main thing she saw as a stumbling block to a permanent relationship. Yet here he was offering to pay towards the care of her sister.

‘It's good of you to think of it.' As she said it she seemed to see Beatrix's poor blank face, the pale eyes that recognised no one for more than a few minutes at a time, and to hear that voice uttering the ancient pronouncements of a fanatic. ‘It's very good of you,' she said, and then, weakly, ‘I'll think about it.'

She had thought about it. She had thought of little else. He must love her if he, a man careful with money, could make an offer like that. Why did it matter so much to her that while he'd take her to pubs, he was so reluctant to go to any restaurant superior to a workman's café? For years she had eaten every meal at home with Beatrix. Restaurants were hardly essential in her life. It was true that his constant harping on what he called ‘gravy train passengers', those whose sole income was derived from state-funded benefits, grated on her. But it was a small matter to set against his attractions, his fondness and need for her, and his recent generous offer. Why then was she going to say no?

‘I want to go on seeing you, Ivan,' she said when she was inside his flat and, to her surprise, he had produced a bottle of wine and a packet of crisps that looked as if it had been around for a long while. ‘It's just that I think it's early days to move in together.
Organising something satisfactory for my sister would take time. It might not even be possible.'

He raised his glass, said, ‘Cheers,' then, ‘You know, I'm not altogether sure I believe in this sister of yours. I wonder if you haven't invented her.'

‘Oh, Ivan, why would I?'

‘How about to create a distance between us? To make it impossible for us to be really close?'

‘Of course I haven't invented her.'

‘I'm not convinced. I think I'll come and see her. See if she really exists. I could take you home tonight, couldn't I? As a matter of fact, I
ought
to take you home. It's a bit remiss of me not to.'

She had resolved not to bring the food this evening. It was a habit she shouldn't get into. He surprised her again by producing two fillet steaks, frozen peas and carrots and two panna cottas from a supermarket.

‘Not fish and chips, then?'

She smiled as she said it but he didn't return her smile. The idea of his taking her home was very unwelcome. Meeting Beatrix didn't matter. She would stare at him or not stare at him, closing her eyes. But Ismay would be there. Pamela had never before shied away from introducing any friend to her nieces but now the fear of what he might say to Ismay, what effect his manner and way of speaking might have on Ismay, made her wince. Heather would be even worse. She was less tolerant. When she realised she expected those close to her to
tolerate
Ivan, Pamela felt very miserable.

She cooked the food and they ate it. Ivan talked about his job and the various disagreements, not to say vendettas, he had with colleagues. People were envious of him and therefore had it in for him. Pamela had always believed that when a man claims to have many enemies the fault must to some extent lie with him but
she couldn't let herself adhere to that when it was Ivan. If she was going to think like that she might as well go home now and never come back.

They went to bed. Eating supper, going to bed, had become routine. She thought it very early in their relationship to get into a routine but she could tell he was a man who liked an orderly life, geared to the clock, and she couldn't really fault that. The pleasures of lovemaking were overshadowed for her by the knowledge that he was coming home with her, Ismay would meet him and she shouldn't be thinking like this.

It didn't happen. He broke with his timetable and fell asleep. She got up, wrote him a note that said,
I'll phone. See you soon. Love, Pam
, and went out into the street to begin the frightening walk to the bus stop. A few people about would have made it less sinister than this emptiness. There were always cars. At night, she thought, it was easy to have the illusion that the cars, the streams of them, were driverless automatons, moving of their own volition. One single person appearing ahead of her, walking towards her, or behind and following her, would be the terrifying thing, just one. This wasn't the West End, of course, it was too far south, but now she remembered that one of the Werewolf's victims had been walking on Wimbledon Common when she felt his hands on her throat.

Surely Ivan shouldn't have condemned her to this? She remembered that it was she who had left him. He had been asleep. He hadn't sent her out into the night alone. And hadn't she spent the whole evening hoping he wouldn't come with her?

The bus came and she got on to it.

More prudently than her aunt, Ismay hailed a taxi the short distance to home. It was twenty past eleven. She
was wondering if Andrew still lived in Fulham or if he had moved in with Eva Simber. Suppose she were to phone him on his old number? Or on his mobile? She could phone like an old friend, just say she was sorry about Eva. No, she couldn't. Her voice wasn't capable of that.

For the first time for a long while she went to bed without having a preliminary drink. She slept more soundly than she had for weeks.

It occurred to Edmund that the police might come to see his wife. After all, she wasn't a friend of Eva Simber's but she had set out to meet and talk to her in St James's Park, and had made at least three phone calls to her. A woman phoning another woman asking her to give up her boyfriend for the sake of her sister was hardly a normal way of making contact with someone. He said so to Heather.

‘Do you think so?' Heather said.

‘They may want to ask you if Eva ever mentioned to you a man who'd threatened her or stalked her. Something like that. They'll ask everyone who knew her that sort of thing.'

‘I didn't really know her.'

‘I'm just warning you, darling, so you won't be alarmed if the police come.'

‘I don't think I'm the alarmed sort,' said Heather.

Ismay phoned later in the day to ask Heather if she thought Andrew should somehow be told she was waiting for him, had never given up on him.

‘No, I don't. That would do more harm than good. You'll just have to be patient.'

‘So you do think he'll come back to me?'

‘Just be patient, Issy. Wait for him to come back or not come back. You haven't much choice, have you?'

The police never came.

*    *    *

Working the area of the West End he called his ‘manor', Fowler left Oxford Street behind him – useless for really good stuff – and made his way down South Molton Street. He was having a bad morning and suspected that the bins had been recently emptied by Westminster City Council. It was the wrong time of day for them but that meant little. They could have changed their time or taken on temporary staff ignorant of the rules. He crossed Bond Street and Regent Street, and made a foray into Soho, far from his usual haunts. A bin in Old Compton Street, surrounded by a detritus of chicken bones and call girl cards, yielded a broken flowerpot and a cigarette packet labelled Smoking Kills and containing eight dog ends.

Fowler trailed southwards. Months, even years, had passed since he had investigated the bins of Leicester Square but there was a chance one of those binge drinkers who infested the place by night might have left behind a half-empty lager can or even dregs in a wine bottle. Glad that he had made it last, he had a little morphine left in the cologne bottle and on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields he sat down and sipped it. Not for the first time he wondered why Marion had kept morphine sulphate. Not for his use, certainly. She might be a secret addict. If that were so, there would be more in the flat, concealed in hiding places he knew nothing of.

It wasn't long before the visions started. Troops of white-robed pilgrims walking along the kind of paved streets Fowler's imagination placed in Babylon or Nineveh, headed for a vast stone palace from some obscure period of prehistory. Skull-faced figures sat about on broken rocks and read from parchment scrolls. He was unaware of falling asleep but very aware of a foot prodding his ribs and moving him on. Only half awake, he muttered to himself, ‘Buck up, Fowler,
wakey-wakey,' drifted up St Martin's Lane, wove across the street between cars with unsympathetic drivers, was nearly run over in Little Newport Street where Marion had once told him their grandfather had been born, and finally came to rest, leaning against the wall of one of the great cinemas of Leicester Square.

His hallucinations had subsided into a vague greyish fog, populated by moving shapes, so that London looked as it must have done in the days of pea-soupers. It was inadequate to obscure the waste bin that stood two yards from him, a bin full almost to overflowing. Fowler was usually methodical about his emptying procedure but this time he picked out object after object, plastic and paper, bottle and packet, much of it coated in grease or tomato ketchup, and strewed them across the pavement. Halfway down was an unexpected find, a large stone-coloured handbag. Fowler pulled it out and wiped off its thick dappled surface traces of what seemed an effusion from the leather itself but which smelt like salad cream. He allowed himself briefly to hope that whoever had discarded it had forgotten to empty it of cash, cards and saleable items but he was a realist and he quickly undid the zip.

‘Marc Jacobs' said a label inside. Maybe that was the owner who had thrown it away. No cash, no credit cards, not much at all. The fog was beginning to clear. Fowler sat down on the pavement with his feet in the street and examined the bag's contents. A woman passer-by stopped beside him and began lecturing him on dropping litter.

‘All of us are standing in the gutter,' Fowler remarked to her, ‘but some of us are looking at the stars.'

Although Ismay knew Eva Simber was dead, it took her a while to absorb it into her mind as a fact. It was a long
time since she had read a newspaper but now she read two every day, a morning paper and an evening, not so much to discover the latest police moves as to see yet another photograph of Eva. It was as if these pictures and the sensational captions underneath them made her death real. This was the work surely of one of those strange half-crazy men whose description and faces seldom appeared in the newspapers until they came up for trial, itinerant men who had no occupation, no permanent relationships, were probably illiterate, had been in and out of prison. The West End Werewolf who had put his hands round women's throats and run off laughing had now killed.

Of course she thought of Andrew. How was he? What did he feel? Nothing much, she hoped. Conventional feelings of pity only, pity and a certain amount of horror, but no grief. Later she began asking herself what he would do now. She meant, will he come back to me, but it was a while longer before she let herself answer with a strong affirmative.