She Died Young (5 page)

‘I see.’ Moules paused.

‘If that’s all, sir …’ McGovern stood up again.

But Moules still hadn’t finished. ‘So there might be something questionable about this King’s Cross affair. Allegations of incompetence – we have to take them seriously.’

‘Or more than incompetence.’

‘I see.’

‘His reputation’s not for nothing, sir, as the top crime reporter. He does have an instinct.’

‘I don’t believe in instinct, McGovern. Police work deploys reason, not instinct to establish facts. And, as I said, I don’t trust journalists.’

‘You can trust Blackstone to milk the Tony Marx affair.’

Moules was silent, presumably thinking about that.

‘If we followed up the girl’s death he might …’ McGovern had been about to say ‘do us a favour in return’, but guessed that Moules was suspicious of favours, so instead changed it to ‘… he’d be pleased. And it might be a useful lead in any procedural inquiry.’

‘So he was suggesting the investigation of this girl’s death wasn’t all it should have been?’

‘He suggested there was something not right about it, sir.’

Moules now leaned forward and put the tips of his fingers together, in a gesture McGovern found annoying. ‘The publicity over the Soho stabbing has been terrible. We need to assist the press to see things from our point of view.’

‘I don’t know how much the
Chronicle
knows. He did hint there might be a reason there’s been no arrest in the Soho murder case.’

‘I think we know that, don’t we? Unbreakable alibi. Slater questioned the suspect on – three occasions, wasn’t it – but he couldn’t be budged. He stuck to his story. Slater’s team checked out his alibi. It’s rock solid.’

‘I know, sir. There’s a wall of silence. Hell has frozen over. But that’s not what Blackstone meant.’

Moules stared at McGovern. ‘That makes it all the more remarkable that in this case …’ He didn’t complete the sentence.

‘It’s possible Blackstone could be helpful – if we gave him something to expose.’

‘No, no.’ Moules stood up and walked over to the window. ‘We can do without that sort of help. That would never do. It must be dealt with on a strictly internal basis.’ After another long silence he said: ‘But we’ll make a few enquiries about this girl in the hotel. Low-key. Jarrell’s working in that division now – King’s Cross. We’ll proceed cautiously.’

At that moment there was a commotion in the corridor. Slater’s unmistakable voice was heard shouting, ‘Then effing well lock him up.’

A bang on the door, and Slater flung it open without waiting for an invitation. Seeing McGovern, he did a fake double take. ‘Apologies, sir. Am I interrupting something?’

‘What is it, Slater?’ Moules stared at the intruder. For Slater’s presence did intrude. He seemed louder, larger than other men as he stood in the doorway. He was the image of the glaring American eagle, his domed forehead sloping into a great beaked nose, with piercing eyes on either side, the head supported by a massive neck.

‘Need a search warrant, sir. There’s a fence down Old Street way—’

‘Calm down, Slater. And another time, wait till I answer before entering the room.’

McGovern would have been interested to see how the encounter developed, but Moules dismissed him. Reaching his own office, he sat down at his desk and looked out of the window. During the brief interregnum following Gorch’s departure he’d made sure he got moved to a better room. But he’d lost his Sergeant, Jarrell, who’d had enough of the Branch.

He missed Jarrell; and in a way he missed Gorch. He didn’t think Moules understood the personal significance to him of Professor Quinault.

What had happened in Berlin … what had happened was that McGovern had brought about the downfall of Hegley Quinault’s great friend, the MI6 agent Miles Kingdom. While working for Kingdom, McGovern had discovered his past crimes against children. Kingdom had committed suicide. The spies had not forgiven McGovern for exposing their best interrogator. If there was one thing they didn’t like, it was having their dirty secrets aired in public. Worse, in their eyes, McGovern was responsible for Kingdom’s death. Quinault had taken his friend’s death particularly badly; it was said he’d blamed Special Branch in general and McGovern in particular.

Gorch had protected McGovern in spite of the spies’ hostility and made sure he got promoted after this defining episode. Yet the scandal had clung to McGovern, defining him as a man who put highfalutin notions of truth and personal integrity above the more weighty matters of state security.

More damaging, even, than the distrust of the secret services, had been McGovern’s own personal sense of doubt. For Kingdom had tricked him. McGovern had fallen for the disgraced agent’s surface charm and cynicism. He thought the less of himself as a result. His confidence was undermined.

That he was now surreptitiously to investigate Quinault, the man who had most resented his part in the Kingdom affair – and at the request of the very organisation whose favourite son Kingdom had been – was more than surprising. It was totally unexpected and therefore disturbing: ironic, but above all, sinister.

He even suspected it might be a trap they had set him for some devious purpose of their own. They might want revenge for Kingdom’s disgrace. Or perhaps they were using him to advance some private vendetta against the distinguished historian of ancient Rome. It was an unpleasant thought.

chapter
6

N
IGHT HAD FALLEN BY
the time McGovern left the railway station. Mist blurred the trees that stretched tall and bleak along one side of the suburban road. The golden squares of light from the neat, uniform houses on the opposite side seemed the more welcoming by contrast with the vague darkness of the park.

Towards the end of the road the houses changed, with curved windows, portholes and flat roofs. The eccentricity of the ocean-liner style had delighted Lily.

As soon as he opened the front door he heard voices and laughter. Lily and her friends Mike and Eveline from the art school sat in the sitting room. They looked up at him as he stood in the doorway. He wondered what brilliant discussion he’d interrupted.

Lily swept her long hair back from her face in that lovely familiar gesture of hers.

‘You’re early, darling. D’you want some tea?’ She lifted the teapot. ‘Oh, there’s none left. Sorry.’

‘I’ll get a beer.’ Although it was tea he wanted. He sat down on the sofa.

Mike grinned. ‘Solved any crimes today?’ The jocularity was awkward. ‘Murder and mayhem as per usual? The Soho stabbing …’

Eveline laughed. ‘Poor Jack. He’s only just got in. You don’t want to talk shop the minute you get home, do you?’

‘Nothing to report, I’m afraid. Not my case, anyway.’

‘I’ll make some fresh tea,’ said Lily.

With his wife out of the room, her guests valiantly kept the conversation going. ‘We were talking about having an exhibition,’ said Eveline. ‘Our new work.’

‘Sounds exciting,’ said McGovern, but he was still thinking about Professor Quinault.

‘It’s great Lily’s been made head of the art department at the school,’ said Eveline. ‘We’re lucky – of course it’s hard work at the college, but teaching art students is a lot easier than a horde of school kids who probably don’t even want to be there.’

‘I think they like her classes.’

Mike laughed. ‘A rest from maths and geography.’

‘And she still finds time to do her own work. I do admire her,’ added Eveline. ‘I don’t know how she has the energy. And with you working such odd hours. Away, here and there. All over the place.’

‘Well, that gives her more time, doesn’t it?’ said McGovern drily, aware too late that it sounded ungracious, but the whole conversation felt awkward and he was too tired and preoccupied to try to be charming. If only Lily’s arty friends could accept him as he was, as normal, but they seemed to view policemen as an exotic species, slightly alarming and at the same time a bit comical.

‘We’d better be off, I think,’ said Eveline. ‘Jack wants to relax, don’t you?’

‘No – please,’ he protested. But he never felt at ease with the couple, especially Eveline, a dark, thin woman, who advertised her artistic identity by wearing colourful peasant skirts, black polo-neck sweaters and gay peasant scarves. Her husband dressed to match in his black shirts and red ties. McGovern told himself they were perfectly pleasant and friendly, but he was beginning to fear they were drawing his wife away from him and into their world of suburban bohemia, a world he hadn’t expected to find in this far south-east corner of greater London. He tried not to dislike the self-conscious way they paraded their unconventional credentials, setting themselves against the conservatism of their neighbours and railing against ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Mike was fond of expressing supposedly shocking opinions, with the follow-up: ‘It’s the anarchist in me, you know.’ But he wasn’t an anarchist, McGovern thought, irritated. He held a perfectly ordinary middle-class job as a teacher at an art college. He was state-employed; effectively he was a bureaucrat.

‘Please stay,’ said McGovern politely. ‘I’ve had a rather busy day, that’s all. You’ll forgive me if I don’t bore you with the details.’

But they left. ‘We’ll see ourselves out,’ they shouted from the hall.

Lily brought in the new pot of tea. ‘I hope you didn’t frighten them away.’

He leaned back in the big, old-fashioned armchair, soothed by the familiarity of the room and its objects, assembled gradually, mostly by Lily, over the four years they’d lived here, an eclectic mixture of the exotic and the banal: the odd bits of Victorian china, the soapstone Ganesh, the framed photographs she’d taken in Scotland, the old, velvet-covered sofa and the oriental screen. But Mike and Eveline had left a little ripple of disturbance in their wake and as McGovern sipped the tea his wife had poured, he felt for a moment lonely and ill at ease.

He knew he should have encouraged Lily to talk about the proposed art exhibition, but he was too worried about his dubious assignment in Oxford. ‘I’m to go to Oxford next week. Have a look at the Hungarian refugees.’

‘The poor things.’

‘At least, that was what it was supposed to be about. But now it turns out it’s more about some suspect professor. One of their own, or used to be – only it seems they’ve turned against him. He was a close friend of Kingdom; he blamed me for what happened.’

‘Oh … That’s not good.’ She said no more, when he’d been hoping for her most intense sympathy. Now he felt she wasn’t really listening.

‘It’s bloody difficult. Nigh on impossible situation, to be honest.’

‘Oh dear.’ She had folded her legs under her on the sofa and looked up at him, softly smiling as he turned up and down the little room.

She wasn’t taking it seriously enough, but he suppressed his resentment and continued: ‘The new Super wants me to keep an eye on CID as well.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Things have got lax. He seems to think if I cultivate them, which means spend time drinking with them, I’ll pick up information about what’s going on, their wee schemes. That’s not my idea of what I should be doing. They’ll not trust me, so it’s pointless anyway.’

‘That all sounds rather difficult.’

‘If I get to hear of something and he can crack down on them as a result he’ll get the credit. If it all goes wrong, which it will, then I’ll get the blame. But I think I persuaded him that Jarrell would be better suited. And I’ll be going to Oxford next week, so it’s not imminent.’

‘Oh, darling – it’s such a difficult job. I sometimes wish …’

He knew what she wished. She wanted him to retrain as a lawyer. It’s not too late, she would say, you’re only thirty-five.

Sometimes he felt a hell of a lot older. He couldn’t help resenting the way she didn’t want to talk about his work. But perhaps he was neglectful, insensitive. Hers was important too. He sighed and changed the subject. ‘Mike and Eveline were telling me more about this exhibition you’re planning.’

‘Isn’t it exciting? It was Eveline’s idea. An exhibition at the art college. We’ll show our work. Have a grand municipal opening. Show Chelsea and the Royal Academy what the suburbs can do.’

‘Sounds like a good idea.’

‘Or we might have it at the public library. They don’t really do things like that, but we might get more of the general public in then. It’s the new movement, you know – Pop Art.’

‘Pop Art!’

‘It’ll shock Bromley! We hope!’

‘It does not take much to shock Bromley.’

‘Mike and Eveline are very keen. So are the Bradleys.’

In other words, her little coterie of arty people; there were so few of them, which made them rather too embattled, unnecessarily he felt, for the citizens of Bromley were indifferent to great new movements in the art world rather than actively hostile. It was a live-and-let-live sort of suburb, where people ‘kept themselves to themselves’ – to him an alien and coldly English concept. Yet because of his work, so much of it confidential, it suited him well enough.

After supper they sat on the sofa and listened to the Third Programme. She curled up comfortably against him and he put his arm round her. He stroked her hair, loving its sweet, clean, shampoo smell. After a while he said what he’d been thinking, off and on, for a long time now.

‘We’re not getting any younger. Isn’t it time we started a family? More than time. You’ll be thirty-two next birthday and—’

But she’d stiffened within the circle of his arm.

‘What’s the matter?’

Her head down: ‘Nothing.’ And after a while: ‘What’s the hurry? There’s plenty of time.’

‘Don’t you want to have kids while we’re still young enough to enjoy them?’

‘Oh, Jack,’ and she moved a little away. ‘Don’t be tiresome.’

He was tired and didn’t want an argument, but he couldn’t understand why she wasn’t more enthusiastic, so he persisted obstinately. ‘I know you said when we first moved here, you didn’t want kids
yet
– we were moving house – you were starting your new job – then your mother was ill …’

‘I suppose I’m not as – I mean it’s really you who’s so keen on children, isn’t it?’

‘Aren’t you? Don’t all women want bairns?’ In his agitation he’d slipped back into an old way of talking.

She laughed. ‘What d’you know about all women?’

He tried to stay calm. ‘Well,
I
want children. You know that. I always have. I’ve always
assumed
—’

‘Yes.
You
. You just assume.’

‘Jesus Christ, Lily – what are you talking about?’ He could no longer sit still. He stood up, roughly switched off the wireless, looked down at her, angry, baffled. ‘Is it your job? You can go on working, I won’t stop you.’

‘I wouldn’t have time. Eveline says children eat up your life.’

‘She hasn’t got any. Didn’t you say they couldn’t have children? Envy, that’s what that is. Sour grapes.’

‘You hardly know her.’

‘You pay far too much attention to them. You’d have more time. You could give up the teaching and devote yourself to your painting. I can support you. And that’s no way to talk about children. Eat up your life! They’re what keeps life going!’

‘You don’t care about my painting. You’re not even interested in the exhibition. Why do we have to talk about this now?’

Startled, he stood over her. She shrank back in the sofa as if afraid of his anger. He was angry, but more than angry, he was shocked, baffled. How had this all blown up out of nowhere?

‘We’re happy as we are, aren’t we? Aren’t you happy?’

‘That’s not the point. You never said …’ He walked up and down the room. It seemed too small to contain him and this huge shock. The fire sparked merrily in mockery at his wrath. She’d completely winded him. And how long had this been festering in silence? It was a silent lie. She’d lied by omission. What it amounted to was that she really didn’t want children at all. It was as bad as if she’d been unfaithful to him: a betrayal. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m not saying anything. I just wish you wouldn’t go on. You can’t leave things alone.’

He could see she was almost afraid of him and that affronted him too. A cocktail of rage and guilt and incomprehension surged through him. ‘It’s selfish not to have children.’

That was his mother speaking. He’d heard her say that of the childless couple in their tenements. And it was true, although in that case it had turned out they couldn’t have kids.

‘Please don’t shout, Jack. I didn’t say we wouldn’t. I just said there’s no hurry. And please turn the wireless back on. I was listening to that programme.’

He left the room and walked through the kitchen into the garden, leaving the back door open. He smoked, pacing up and down. The trouble was, she was spoilt, a spoilt only child. She’d come from a privileged family. She was too used to having her own way. His princess – but she was too much of a princess. She was haughty, wilful. His bitter thoughts fed on the disagreement, so that it swelled into a denial of him, of what he was. Why had she married him if she didn’t want children?

But all he said when he returned was: ‘We might as well have stayed in central London. If we hadn’t moved you’d not have got friendly with those poseurs who’ve filled you up with all their rubbish about art and artists.’