TWENTY-ONE

Reminding Griff to lock himself in, and telling him to think about keeping the shop shut all day, Steve allowed me to sit in the passenger seat, and we talked – he talked – as if I was a casual acquaintance he was helping out. He yakked about tennis – his passion, it seemed – and how he’d won tickets for Wimbledon in his club ballot. I floated cricket as a topic, since when Griff watched it on TV I tended to watch too, especially when the players wore whites, not those silly paint by numbers pyjamas. But it came back to tennis, and I found myself saying I watched Wimbledon if I had the chance. Maybe when I had the chance would have been more tactful. So the journey passed quite pleasantly, considering the circumstances.

When we crossed the M20, you could see it was pretty clogged up, with a lorry dumping Portaloos at intervals along the hard shoulder.

‘Operation Stack?’ I asked.

‘Didn’t you catch the news last night? Nor this morning?’

I shook my head. How uncivilized was that? The Ten O’clock News and the Today programme were rituals Griff had always insisted on. Of course, this morning’s listening had been rather disrupted by the arrival of Morris.

Sighing, he explained. ‘The French are on strike yet again. Their civil servants, I think, this time. No customs officers, no passport control, so all these poor saps are stuck here for the duration! What other country would have to use a major motorway as a giant car park? So yes, it’s Operation Stack!’ Steve moaned, punctuating his comments with a lot of words Griff and I didn’t use till later in the day. ‘Seems they can’t get planning permission to build proper car parks along the route.’ He went off into a thoroughly un-PC, as in politically correct, rant that would have warmed Aidan’s heart, but sounded odd from a young man once called to God.

Robin! Why hadn’t I been in touch with Robin? I suppose it might not have been good manners given the theory that I’d robbed one of his churches, but that was only yesterday: you should keep touching base with friends under stress, shouldn’t you? On the other hand the same applied to him. He hadn’t called me. Did that mean he thought I was guilty of stealing his silver? I felt sick at the thought. I told myself he was probably simply told not to contact me, lest it prejudice whatever case they were building up. But the Robin I knew and trusted would simply have lifted two clerical fingers in the face of such an instruction.

I wiped my palms on my trousers, the navy linen ones I’d grabbed first thing. I had a nasty feeling I had a divvy moment coming on.

In fact, tact or not, the first thing I blurted out to Freya Webb when I was ushered into her office was, ‘Is Robin OK?’

She managed to ask coolly, since the constable who’d taken me up hadn’t quite shut the door, ‘The clergyman?’

‘Robin Levitt. I haven’t heard from him, and the rate my friends and acquaintances are dropping I’m . . .’ I stopped – my wretched lip was quivering.

Closing the door firmly on my escort, she pressed me down on to a chair. ‘Lina, the man takes half a dozen services on a Sunday, more or less. And that means sermons to prepare and what not. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he was incommunicado yesterday, or even Saturday, which I believe is his day off, isn’t it? Or is that today?’ Her cool facade melted. ‘Would it make you happier to phone and check? Or,’ she added casually, ‘I could try? His number’s in my phone. At least,’ she added with a brave attempt at a smile, ‘we know he’s not much bemus’d in beer.’

Did we indeed? What was she waiting for? After all, I wasn’t the one with the hots for him.

She turned her back, walking towards an impressive notice board, the information in frighteningly tidy columns. She left a message and turned back to me, no longer quite so serene and in control. ‘Of course, he could be with a parishioner.’

‘Of course. And I think he does assembly at a couple of schools in the benefice – only I can’t remember which days.’

‘Lina, even if I had the manpower, I couldn’t send someone hurtling down to his rectory just on the off-chance. It would demean him. And,’ she added with a grim smile, ‘it would take forever to get through, the roads being what they are today.’

‘If you want me to go – when you’ve finished with me, that is – I will.’ Lack of car apart, of course.

She snorted. ‘This is all highly irregular, and we’re being complete idiots. Lina, there’s a lot going on at the moment, all apparently circling round you. I’ve checked the CCTV images of a woman who could be you arguing with a man we believe has been murdered, and I’m happy to believe you when you say it’s not you. For the time being. And I’m happy to believe that you didn’t try to tip poor Josie Honeycombe into the sea. For the time being. But I need the person who did – and that someone clearly looks like you. Where do I start looking?’

I must have gaped.

‘Look, we have procedures for murders – the case isn’t even in my hands any more, but being run by an MIT.’

I nodded. ‘That’s a specialist murder team?’

‘Yes. Pros to their fingertips, every gizmo going. But sometimes it’s nice to prove my team aren’t complete hicks, only capable of parking Euro lorries on a motorway. Not to mention saving you an awful lot more hassle, only at their hands this time. Let me put this bluntly: do you have any relatives who look sufficiently like you to fool our facial recognition programs into thinking they’re you?’

‘I may.’

She slapped the desk. ‘Come on, Lina, what sort of answer is that?’

‘A truthful one,’ I bridled. I took a deep breath. ‘You’ll know from Robin that my father, Lord Elham, is eccentric. He may not have told you that Pa had an . . . an unorthodox sex life. None of his children is legitimate. None, as far as I know, knows any of the others. He kept a list, in a tatty French vocab exercise book, of his lovers and his offspring. As it happens, it’s in my keeping, not at Bossingham Hall,’ I said airily.

‘Why?’

‘People think he owns the hall.

‘He doesn’t?’

‘No. Trustees. He’s confined to one wing. But that didn’t stop a very dodgy claimant turning up and trying to destroy the record that would have proved he was a fake.’ The little book meant more to me than I could possibly have explained to a comparative stranger, so without my father’s knowledge and against Morris’s advice I’d removed it. It was still lurking in my special safe.

‘And does this vocab book list the gender of the lovers?’

Playing for time, as much as anything else, I managed a grim laugh. ‘My father might be the most amoral person I know, but he was outraged at the thought that one of his neighbours might want to bugger me.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘I mean, he’s deeply conventional in many ways,’ I said slowly. I didn’t want to lie, but I did need to think. ‘He liked women, pretty women, and kept a list of the outcome of their affair. Sometimes it was an STD, sometimes an abortion, sometimes a baby, the gender of which he’d note. No addresses, unfortunately – not even the towns they came from.’

‘OK, we’ll question your father,’ she said briskly, as if that would solve everything. ‘Would you want to be there?’

I thought about other people’s conversations with my father – Morris’s, for instance, when he’d perceived my father as a dippy old soak, and also Harvey’s, during which Pa had proved himself as fly as they come. ‘It’s not easy questioning an alcoholic . . . Morris tried once—’

‘Ah! Morris! I wondered how long it would take you to drag his name into the conversation! Oh, Lina – get a grip. I can see you’ve got a mega-crush on him, but the guy’s married. And no matter what they say, married men always go back to their wives. Actually,’ she added, with a kindish smile, ‘he’s got an even bigger crush on you, hasn’t he? But he’s old enough to be your father. Twenty years older than you at least. Not so bad now, but in twenty years’ time? And even if he doesn’t have the same problems as your dad, you know what the police are like for lasting personal relationships. I’m sorry, but someone had to say it.’

I could hardly speak for the blood pounding my ears and flooding my face. I was off my chair, ready to grab something – anything – heavy and smash it into her face. She wasn’t hanging around: she was on her feet, retreating behind her chair.

I think what made me sit down again was the thought of what being the subject of a catfight might do for Morris’s career. Even more than what being in said catfight would do for mine – spell in the nick, at very least . . .

‘OK, let’s leave Morris out of this for a bit except as far as your case is concerned,’ I said slowly, sitting down and crossing my legs. ‘And putting my father on one side – and yes, I’m happy to be with him when you interview him – Morris took a disk from our cottage and promised to show it to you. Have you seen it yet?’

Returning warily to her own seat, she patted her desk top papers, and, burrowing under a pile of files, produced the disk. ‘Seen as in having it here, but not as in having looked at it,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Lina – I was out of order there.’

Somehow I felt myself in a much stronger position.

She said, almost humbly, ‘OK, let’s look at it.’

We watched in silence.

‘Shit,’ she concluded. ‘Though such language is strictly off the record, eh? How did someone know two genuine police officers were heading your way? A mole in the control room? Bugger!’

‘Or just coincidence?’ I said, trying to cheer her up. ‘After all, if the so-called woman and Griff’s assailant are one and the same, they might just have been chancing their arms. Though it was exceptionally good luck on their part arriving just as we got back from our travels,’ I added, raising an eyebrow at her. ‘Assuming they hadn’t been parked there all day on the off-chance.’

‘I don’t like that sort of good luck,’ she said. ‘Mind you, you do make it easier for people to track you with that highly-visible van of yours.’

‘I hired a car for a bit, but Griff insisted that we were letting the bad boys win the psychological battles.’

‘He would.’ She scowled at her mobile, as if willing Robin to ring. ‘But sometimes it’s better to win the war, even if that means becoming White Van Man – or in your case, Woman.’

I was worrying too much about something else to argue. ‘What if this man/woman fake police officer finds out you mean to send someone to interview my father? You know, that mole you mentioned,’ I added, seeing her face tighten.

‘Easy: I’ll go with you myself. Except there’s this bloody conference in half an hour about Operation Stack.’

‘How long is it likely to last?’

A little delay suited me – or it would have done if only I’d had some wheels. I certainly needed to warn my father in advance, as I always did. Then there was the matter of retrieving the exercise book from its hiding place. And for all Freya’s bravado, I wanted to know Robin was safe and sound.

‘Piece of string. Look, I’ll see you out, and – problem?

‘Steve White ferried me over. And he’s a bit senior to ferry me back. Tell you what, I’ll take your advice – at least some of it,’ I conceded with a grin to show that there weren’t too many hard feelings, ‘and phone the hire car people. They can bring the Micra or whatever over here.’