For the Sake of Elena (21 page)

“Yes,” Lynley said thoughtfully. “Most people do.”

He nodded his goodbye and left the room. Two girls were sitting on the staircase outside the door, their knees drawn up, their heads together over an open textbook. They didn’t look up as he passed them, but their conversation ceased abruptly, only to resume once he reached the lower landing. He heard Adam Jenn’s voice call, “Katherine, Keelie, I’m ready for you now,” and went out into the chill autumn afternoon.

He looked across Ivy Court at the graveyard, thinking about his meeting with Adam Jenn, wondering what it must have been like to be caught between the father and the daughter, wondering most of all what that violent
No!
had meant when he asked the young man if he and Elena had been suited to each other. And still he knew nothing more about Sarah Gordon’s visit to Ivy Court than he had known before.

He glanced at his pocket watch. It was just after two. Havers would be a while with the Cambridge police. He had sufficient time to make the run to Crusoe’s Island. If nothing else, that would give him at least a modicum of information. He went to change his clothes.

9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We understand,” Anthony said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d like to see them.”

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

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

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

Glyn said, “That won’t be necessary.”

“But surely you’ll want to discuss—”

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

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