The Blue Last (14 page)

“I agree she could've done it.” Jury still hadn't gotten over the way the woman had smiled, looking at her baby's picture.

“What I wonder is, does Erin know about all this?”

“You mean Maisie. I don't know.” Suddenly, he looked at Mickey and laughed. “Hell, Mickey, you sound more interested in this alleged imposture than in the murder itself.”

“Forget ‘alleged.' You don't see any connection?”

“With the murder of Simon Croft? Not at the moment.”

“Then maybe money wasn't the motive.”

“That kind of money? Moneyed money? I'd say it's always a motive. Few other motives could touch it. The Tynedale inheritance would be one hell of a motive.”

Liza said, “Mickey told me about this case. She would have to be the Medea of all mothers to carry this off for half a century. Now, would someone get me a
real
martini?” She pushed her glass toward them.

Jury smiled and took her glass and went to the bar, where he stood as the bartender poured a frugal measure of gin. He thought about his walk on Sunday. It had taken him past the site of the old Bridewell Prison, supposedly a “house of correction” for beggars, thieves and harlots. He tried to imagine the hopeless horrible life there. Bridewell was a scandal. The Bridewell orphans—what a way to begin a life. Orphans. He looked back at the table. Then the drinks came.

“Here we go,” Jury said, setting down the drinks. “Is this my fourth? Or my fifth?”

“Well, it's only my second, so hand it over.” She took a sip, got up.

“What's wrong?”

“I'll be right back.”

“Croft found out,” said Mickey.

Jury laughed. “You don't even speculate, do you?”

“Of course I speculate. Sometimes.”

Liza was back holding a stemmed glass. “It just took a little bit of convincing. It's a trick I picked up in my former line of work. I offered to shoot him.” She tossed a couple of bags of crisps on the table.

Mickey, Jury thought, was obsessing. Jury tried to get him off the subject, but Mickey managed to slide back to it. Jury wondered if being obsessed with Kitty Riordin kept him from obsession with his own condition.

Liza, though, knew how to get him off the tangent: she brought up some old cases either he or she or both had worked. Fairly soon all three of them were laughing and ordering up more drinks. “Remember—” Liza began “—that bank job?”

“I didn't do bank jobs, babe.”

“No, no, no. That bank job where the perp ran out with a satchel of money right into several cops and surrendered and it turned out to be the cast of
The Bill
?” The three laughed until they choked.

Remember? Remember? They swapped stories for nearly an hour, drank and ate vinegar crisps. Mickey laughed so hard he got one up his nose. Liza sat between them with a hand on each of their arms and once, laughing, got her head down so low a strand of black hair trailed through her martini.

Jury thought how much alike Liza and Mickey were, and yet they weren't in any way competitive.

Liza went on about the time Mickey thought she was the perp in a theft and locked her outside.

Jury was laughing. “Liza, if you're ever available, remember—” He realized what he'd said, and could not unsay it. They both sat smiling but the smiles were wooden. It was only a moment, and Jury got up, nearly toppling his chair in the process. He moved between tables, heading in the direction of the men's room. He did not go in. Instead he leaned against the wall opposite, giving himself a mental lashing. Poor Mickey, poor Liza. He felt as if he'd poured the black night, like ink, across their table. He held this position for a century or two, then he felt a light hand on his arm.

“Richard,” said Liza. “Never mind. Come on back.”

He looked at her and saw her smile was real and bright. She tugged. “Come on!”

Jury followed her back to the table, where they resumed their stories and laughter and got pleasantly, wittily, winningly drunk.

“
Y
ou've got to come with us, Superintendent.”

It was Marshall Trueblood's voice coming over the wire to Jury, who was sitting in his office at New Scotland Yard, chucking a memo from DCS Racer into his OUT box and pulling out the file on Danny Wu. When Marshall Trueblood was talking, you could do things like this, for listening only to every other word in Trueblood's conversation sometimes made more sense than paying close attention.

“Why,” asked Jury, “do I ‘got to'? I seem to recall that trip you and Plant took to Venice, where you also said I'd ‘got to.' But why you need my actual physical presence is a total mystery to me since you have no trouble at all making me up. For example, how I intended once to marry an alcoholic woman with four crazy kids, two in Borstal.”

There was a pause, then Trueblood said, “Not Borstal—”

Jury brought his feet off his desk with a frustrated thud. “Trueblood, these were not real people. And you made up that sob story to keep Vivian from marrying Franco Gioppino. Well, Vivian's
left
Count Dracula, or he left her and marched right out of Long Pidd with some transparent story about his mum getting sick.”

“Yes, yes, yes, but she still hasn't broken it off officially.”

“Meaning what the hell? That still doesn't explain Florence.”

Jury took one of the papers from the Wu file. Danny Wu had never been indicted, much less convicted, for any of the various things he was charged with. He held the page up to the light as if looking for a watermark. He could scarcely believe it: Danny Wu was being investigated in a case involving some stolen art. That was as hard to believe as this phone call. “Is Melrose Plant part of this scheme? Where are you calling from?”

“The Jack and Hammer. It's Diane's new cell phone we're using.”

“The real reason,” said Melrose Plant, who was now in possession of the cell phone, “he's going to Florence is to get a painting authenticated. I think he wants you along as security. A goon.”

“He's got that right, but why in hell does he have to go to Italy? Aren't there people here in England who do that sort of thing? Sotheby's? Christie's?”

“Oh, he's going to one in London, yes. I told him to call the fraud squad. Heh heh.”

“The Fine Arts and Antiques Division, you mean.” He heard a scuffle at the Long Pidd end, or at least a scuffle of voices. Trueblood returned. “I see no point in advertising this picture. It could easily be stolen.”

Jury was reading the details of the alleged art theft. “I know just the man for the job.”

“What?”

“Never mind. So what's this painting, anyway?”

“A Masaccio.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He was a famous Florentine painter, a pupil of Masolino.”

“That's two down; want to go for three?” Jury put the Wu file on his desk and leaned over it.

“The Renaissance.”

“Yes, I have heard of that.”

“We have to—” There was another scuffle around the telephone in Long Piddleton, then a female voice said: “Superintendent, I'm glad I caught you before you engaged in any idiotic plan that involves travel
abroad.
” Diane Demorney warned him off. “Your stars are in direct opposition to one another. Scorpios have to be careful when this happens.”

“I'm not a Scorpio.” Jury didn't really know this. But neither did Diane. Direct opposition?

One-beat pause on Diane's part. “Yes, I
know.
What I meant was that a Scorpio is going to figure prominently in your horoscope.”

Diane Demorney could make the quickest recoveries of anyone Jury knew. “I'll bear that in mind. Now put Plant back on, love.”

She didn't. She said, “You know what they say, ‘See Florence and die.' ”

“Actually, what they say is, ‘See
Rome
and die.' ”

“Well, it makes no difference, since you'd be dead, anyway.”

Jury heard the rasp of a cigarette lighter. “True.”

Plant came on. Jury asked, “What in hell is this call? One of those family round-robin things we used to get when we were away at school?”

Melrose Plant's voice seemed to shrug. “I never got one. Of course, that might have been because—”

Jury squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a few soft blows with the receiver. “Has there been an epidemic of the literalism virus there?”

“Huh?”

Jury slapped another page of the Wu file over. “I can't go to Florence.”

“When did you last have a vacation?”

Jury's eyes strayed to several travel brochures Wiggins had left on his desk. “Last week. I hopped over to Vegas to perform with the Cirque du Soleil. I was diving from the rafters onto a water-covered stage.”

A real silence ensued this time. They seemed to be passing the phone around again. When Melrose came on again, Jury asked, “Do you remember being evacuated during the war?”

“Good lord, that's a bit of a change of subject. Evacuated to
where
? This is the kind of place people got evacuated
to.
Anyway, no. I wasn't born yet,” said Melrose.

“So you don't remember?”

“That generally is the case with the unborn. Why?”

Jury was looking at the snapshot of Kitty Riordin holding the baby Maisie (if she was Maisie). “I'm just trying to sort the identity of someone born then. Whether the mother of this baby is one woman's or another's.”

“Offer to cut it in half. It worked for Solomon.”

“I knew you'd help.” Jury was looking now at the snapshot of Alexandra and Francis Croft. “Do you know what a screen memory is?”

“Yes, a recollection of Agatha walking through the door as she did just now. That's a scream memory if ever there was one.”

“Not ‘scream,' ‘screen.' ”

“Screen? Oh. Isn't that a Freudian concept? The idea being one throws up an image to mask another image too painful to be let into consciousness. Is this about the women and the unfortunate babe?”

“No, not really.”
It's more about me.
“Look, I've got to be going—”

“You picked just the time. Agatha is heading for the telephone.”

“Right. Are you really going to Florence?”

“Yes, of course. As Diane says, see Florence and die.”

“Right. 'Bye.”

Had that street, that building, that voice been a screen memory? But for what? The memory of finding his mother under all of that rubble, that was what should have been screened, shouldn't it?

“Sir?”

Jury looked up from the snapshots and the file at Wiggins, who was setting newspapers down on his desk.

“You all right? You look kind of squiffy.”

“Squiffy? What's that? Where've you been all morning, anyway?”

“Collecting these old newspapers you asked for.” Wiggins's frown suggested his superior might be totally out of it.

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot.” He sorted through Danny Wu's file again, closed it and tapped his chin. “Want some lunch? I mean something beyond that row of black biscuits, oat cakes, rye crisp and whatever liquid refreshment you added eye of newt to?” Jury nodded toward a glass of dark green stuff.

Wiggins looked hurt.

Jury smiled. “I was thinking of lunch at Ruiyi.”

The frown disappeared and Wiggins's face lit up. There were few places he'd want to visit more than Danny Wu's restaurant, an idea shared with a great many Londoners. Ruiyi was the best Chinese restaurant in Soho, and generally one of the best in London. There was always a line. For all of his health nuttiness, Wiggins really perked right up in the presence of MSG, at least Danny's MSG.

While Jury was up and donning his coat, Wiggins crumbled half a black biscuit into his thickish, green, anodyne drink.

Telling himself not to ask, Jury asked, “What's that?”

“Kava Kava, very good for relaxation, calming down. I should take some along to Ruiyi.” He shook his arms into his coat. “Danny Wu might like it. You know how these Asian gentlemen are about calm, peace, that sort of thing.”