Grave Consequences (16 page)

“Emma, come join us,” called the voice I had hoped not to hear. I took a sip from my miserable pint, and resigned, turned and walked over to the table. As heads turned to follow my progress, I began to wonder if whether I mightn’t be better off with my two companions, as much as I had hoped to avoid either of them: Maybe their company would get me out of the Fig and Thistle without further incident. It was an unattractive sort of hope, but then I found myself in a situation where any hope at all was welcome.

Avery and Palmer sat together, smirking amusement evident in every one of their features. Palmer indicated a chair. “Have a seat,” he said.

What the hell were these two doing together? “Maybe just for a moment,” I said. “I told Jane I’d meet her.” I wasn’t keen on mentioning Jane in front of Palmer since he’d spo
ken against her, but I did want to give the impression I’d be missed.

“Course you will. I can tell. You’re a social sort, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but leaned across the table conspiratorially. “This isn’t the sort of place for ladies to be social, though, if you get my drift.”

“Well, the bartender certainly didn’t seem to appreciate my presence,” I said. The foam in my glass had just settled enough so that I could see there was only about a half a pint of beer.

“Oh, anyone can see that,” Palmer said, nodding. “But what I have to ask is what brings you here in the first place? The Prince of Wales is much more your speed.”

“Just trying to catch up with Trevor.” I shrugged, looking around. Attention was still on our table. “Seems he’s had a rough couple of days—”

“Someone cracked him a sweet one, didn’t they?” Palmer mused thoughtfully. “Wonder what he did to deserve that. He probably put his nose where it didn’t belong, and that’s how it got flattened.”

I swallowed. This sounded exactly like the sort of thing he’d said to me in the car the first day we’d met, but I couldn’t understand what his interest in any of this was. I shrugged. “I can’t imagine Trevor being at all curious. He probably did just trip over the cat, as he claims.”

“Possibly, though I don’t see that miserable little sod as an animal lover. What do you reckon, Avery?”

Avery the photographer hadn’t said a word. He looked up from his drink, something I could smell from where I sat was coconut-flavored Malibu, and he grinned. It was an expression that spoke of toothy Halloween masks, perhaps even less attractive than his behavior in the darkroom. He shook his head.

“But one does wonder what would have happened, if he was the sort to extend himself, doesn’t one?” Palmer took a long drink. “It would be a shame for him to find out the hard way.”

Avery hadn’t done anything this whole time but turn his glass around and around in place on the table and stare at me. Piqued, I stared back, not blinking, not hostile, not smiling. He slowly removed his hands from the glass and raised them in front of his face. At first I thought that he was going to say something—his hands seemed to shape a prayer—then I realized he was now holding an imaginary camera. His right index finger snapped down briefly, and Avery smiled faintly, his thumb automatically advancing the imaginary film as he lowered his hands into his lap, still gazing at me.

I turned back to Palmer, disconcerted. I swallowed as shallowly as I could, and when I realized that I was clutching the edge of the table, loosened my fingers ever so slightly.

“How is it that you two know each other?” I asked, taking a sip of my beer.

“Oh, well, it’s a small world, isn’t it?” said Palmer comfortably. “Everyone knows everyone else, knows all their business too. A very tight-knit community, our little neighborhood, always has been. No use for outsiders. We know everyone’s troubles, where all the skeletons are—”

I started. Palmer noticed this with interest.

“Oh, yes. All the skeletons. Who’s doing well, who’s had to scrabble, who might have tiptoed across the narrow line of the law, who’s married to a nutter. Whose daughter is dead.” He said that last with such a satisfaction that my blood froze in my veins.

“You’re not a fan of George Whiting, I take it.” I was as careful as I could to keep my shaking from becoming obvious.

Palmer shrugged elaborately. “Now that you mention it, I’m not. I was a lowly employee of his, once upon a time. Man fired me on suspicion of thievery. Some copper wire went missing from one of the sites.”

“Didn’t help it was found in your garden shed,” said Avery in his cartoon character voice. He laughed silently into his glass.

“I have no idea how it got there to this day,” Palmer averred solemnly. “And that was the first time I went to Hackmoor as well, bastard.”

I suddenly understood that Hackmoor was a prison, recalling Palmer’s earlier description of his limited travels.

Palmer continued, increasingly heatedly. “But the point to that is, the man’s got above himself. He’s no better than any of us, and because he happened to come into a bit, he thinks cake comes out his arsehole. Worse than that, he forgets how things were done, how a bloke, seeing a bit of loose copper about, thinks to make himself a spare quid or two. Some might congratulate him on having an entrepreneurial spirit, seeing as it’s really not doing anyone any harm. No harm in the world; it’s the punters what pay for it, innit? But others take it personal, where there’s no malice intended. But there is now. Malice aplenty. I’ll wager he got what he deserved. Didn’t he?”

With those last words, he looked at me with a hatred burning in his eyes that shocked me to the core. He blinked and something else was there, interest or calculation.

He began to tap on the table with his index finger. “Now you might remember that I suggested that you shouldn’t get mixed up in your friend Jane’s business. It’s complicated enough as it is. And yet here you are, poking about where you’re not wanted, and for the life of me, I can’t imagine why you’d want to go and ignore me. Seeing as I’ve got your best interests at heart.”

I stood up. “It’s probably because I can’t imagine why it’s any concern of yours, either Jane’s affairs or my best interest. Or in fact, why you care at all. Maybe if you answered me that, then I’d have some reason. Until then, I’m just not impressed.”

“I’ll tell you why you should be impressed. Your friend Jane will be just fine on her own. She’s the sort to use people, then toss them aside. She’s done it all her life, by all accounts, and she’s moved here to Marchester; she’s doing it now with that poor sod of a husband of hers. She probably
done it with Julia Whiting too. So she’ll survive just fine; her kind always does. And she wouldn’t think twice about using you the same way. There’s a big hole where her heart ought to be. And that’s just for starters.”

He stood up now and leaned in close to me; panicky as I felt, I tried not to move away from him. “What my interests might be is no concern of yours. If I find they become such, you’ll wish you’d never been born. That’s a promise.”

I shrugged, showing carelessness I was miles from feeling. “We’ll see.” I raised my glass and took a sip of the beer. It wasn’t very nice beer and I noticed my hand was shaking. As I set it down, however, wondering how I was going to just walk away from the Fig and Thistle, a shout from the bar caught the attention of everyone in the pub. The bartender was shouting at a young, disheveled man who was coming from the back of the pub.

“Here, you! I told you I was sick of your coming in here all the time, using the gents as a bathhouse! I don’t want your sort in here!”

“Here, now,” said Palmer, with interest. The quiet that had settled on the pub during our conversation was now animated with little gestures and nods toward the bar. Something was brewing, and everyone knew it.

The young man, small and slenderly built, had curly dark hair that was badly in need of cutting. “I ordered a whiskey. What more do you want? I’m not hurting anything.”

“I don’t care if you ordered a general strike! Get the fuck on your bike and don’t come back, you little—”

I didn’t wait to hear the rest of the harangue. I set my glass down and walked toward the door. Alas, I made the mistake of looking back. Palmer was still unusually interested in the young man arguing with the bartender, but Avery was watching me. He reached over and brushed his fingers along the rim of the glass from which I’d been drinking.

I groped for the door and got the hell out of there.

As I hurried down the street, no longer caring whether I
attracted any undue attention, I forced myself to consider Palmer’s chilling words: “He got what he deserved, didn’t he?” The horrible simplicity of his equation, a dead daughter repays a jail term, was so natural to him that I had to wonder what he might have done to bring it about.

“Oi, you!”

The voice behind me was male, one I didn’t recognize; I walked faster, trying to decide where I should head if things got dicey again. There weren’t many options, as straight back was the only way I knew that might possibly lead me away from trouble.

The voice called out again. “Steady on, there! I want a word with you!”

I hurried along, wishing I’d worn my sneakers instead of my work boots.

“You, Yank! Hold up a moment, damn it!”

I couldn’t think of anything I was less likely to do and further increased my speed. I heard footsteps following behind me. I felt in my coat pocket for something I could use to protect myself and seized a ballpoint pen, flicking the cover off with my thumb.

I heard hurrying footsteps behind me. “Shit, I’m not going to—I just want to ask you about Julia!”

That was possibly the only thing in the world that would have slowed me down that evening. I continued to walk, but slower now, and waited until the footsteps were just behind me, then whirled around to face whoever it was. The young man who’d been banned from the pub, surprised, stepped back a bit, which was the way I wanted things. I pressed my advantage, not knowing how long it would last.

“What do you want? Why do you think I can help you?”

He hooked a thumb back toward the pub slowly, so as not to startle me, I guessed. “I heard you talking with those two…back there. I heard her name. Did you know her?”

Though the light was dim, I could see he was not badly dressed, but had given his clothes hard use lately. He moved with barely contained patience.

“I never met her,” I said warily. “I’m working on the same dig as she was, is all. Who are you?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I just came back to see her and I was too late. Why were you talking about her?”

I had to be careful here. “A friend of mine has been questioned about Julia’s death; I’m sure she’s not involved and I’m just trying to find out how to prove it.”

“How do you know?” He stepped forward eagerly; I stepped back just as quickly, and brought my hand out of my pocket, still clutching the pen. I probably looked more crazy than dangerous, but I was willing to let that work for me as well. The stranger put his hands up.

“I don’t want to hurt you, I just wanted to…I don’t know, talk to someone who might have known Julia.” He sighed and rubbed at the back of his head. “Who might be able to tell me how she died. If you find anything, will you let me know?”

“Why should I?” I took a step back again, not entirely because I was scared, but in part because I was no longer in a state to trust anyone.

“Because I think we’re working toward the same end. Look, I’m sort of…camping out while I’m here. I don’t particularly want to make my presence here known. If you find anything, leave me a note in the cemetery at St. Alban’s. You know the place? There’s a big oak tree by the river side of the churchyard. Leave me a note under a rock at the base of the tree. If I find anything, I’ll let you know too. Same way.”

“I’m not making any promises,” I said, backing off in the direction of my escape route. This was getting surreal.

“Me neither.” He turned away. “The best day’s work Julia ever did was to leave here. I’d like to find out what it was that brought her back. And then got her killed.”

As the stranger ducked down an alley, I turned and started jogging back toward the center of town, putting as much distance between me and the Fig and Thistle as possible. I didn’t slow down until I was just outside the Prince of
Wales and then paused just to catch my breath. The rapidly lengthening shadows cast an unwholesome cloak over landscape that was more happily familiar to me. It was nearly seven, though I was surprised to realize that it was as early as that still. It seemed clear to me that the young stranger was probably the person who was sleeping rough in Sabine’s churchyard. Now I was left asking myself, not so much about his curious lodgings or his desire to avoid notice and the police, but as to what his interest in Julia Whiting’s death was.

T
HE SCENE THAT MET ME UPON ENTERING THE
P
RINCE
of Wales was so far removed from the one I’d just left as to leave me stunned and speechless with relief. I was back where I belonged. The wooden paneling that had struck me as so dark before I now realized glowed from polish and care, adding not light but luster to the room. The glances of the habitués were passing and idly curious rather than suspicious. And best of all, there were faces that I recognized and that welcomed me.

Jane and Greg both cried out “Emma!” simultaneously and waved me over. They were holding hands, practically sitting in each other’s laps, a vast change from the barely polite silences and obvious avoidances of the morning. Even as I walked over, I wondered how they had reconciled—and over what, exactly.

I sat down with more of a sigh and a bump than I meant. Looking at my friends, I started to laugh and they joined in.

“Long day?” Jane asked.

“Way too long,” I answered.

“What will you have, Emma?” said Greg, as he pushed back his chair.

“No, no, it’s my round, I believe,” I said hurriedly. I had never bought a round the last time, and suspected that it was my turn. “You’re having two bitters?”

“Learns fast,” he replied. “Yes, please.”

“And two bitters for me too.” Jane giggled.

I looked at her. Giggling? “And a bitter for Jane.”

It took me a moment to get the attention of the bartender, Ian, but only because it was a busy Friday. “Half a tic.” He handed a whiskey and two gins to a young woman dressed in a business suit, who was being teased from a table on the far side of the room to universal laughter. “Now, what can I get for you? Wait, a moment, you’re with the professors, right? Then that’s two bitters—and what else?”

“Just another one of those, please. And one for yourself.” I’d learned from watching Greg that this was the proper way of tipping in a pub.

Ian beamed. “Well, ta very much indeed. You’re from the States, right? Do you watch the American football, then? I love it, myself.” He began to pull the pints. “Huge place, America, you don’t know till you’re there. My brother was in Texas, a year or two after he left school, the late seventies, it was. I went to go visit him on the holidays, just a tyke, I was. I didn’t know nothing. I got to New York and called him from the airport. Asked him which bus I should take to get to Houston! When he ever told me it would take four days to get there, did my jaw ever drop! I was gobsmacked! You ever been to Houston?” He handed me the drinks, and I paid up.

I shook my head. “Never. Like you said, it’s a big country. I live on the East Coast, Massachusetts.”

“Oh, yeah? The Patriots, right?” He smiled and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Right but…I’m afraid I’m not much for football.” I looked down at the beer. All these pints were perfectly drawn, the amber body still settling in the glass. I’m sure
Brian could have described how and why the minute bubbles were moving up from the bottom, leaving an exact quarter inch of foam at the top, with an elegant physics equation or perhaps a concise statement about the reaction between the carbon dioxide and the air pressure outside the cask, or something like that. All I knew was that these drinks were about as far away as one could get from the Fig and Thistle without actually heading back again.

“Thanks very much,” I said, and moved back to the table. The bartender waved even as he hurried to another patron waiting at the other end of the bar.

Those drinks went down quickly and were followed in rapid succession by another round, but by this time, I’d learned to order half-pints of beer or cokes. It was with some exasperation that I realized that Jane showed no sign of starting the talk that she’d promised. Worse than that, my stomach was empty; I’d had no dinner before I’d gone chasing after Trevor and got entangled at the Fig and Thistle. It didn’t seem that Jane and Greg had eaten either, but they didn’t seem much bothered by the fact, chatting as they were about everything under the sun but archaeology, Julia, or Marchester. I decided to take matters into my own hands.

“I’m starving,” I said. “Let’s go out and get something to eat. Someplace quiet.”

For a moment Jane looked at me with a calculating clarity that seemed quite out of place in the giddiness she’d shown all evening. She glanced away, and I watched her face change again, to relief. “Look, there’s Simon. Oi, Simon! Over here!” A short, fair bloke started with recognition, waved back, and hastily joined us.

Simon was a friend of Greg’s from school, I was told, and appeared to be every bit as affable as Greg. After yet another round, courtesy of Simon, I was starting to get fidgety and Jane saw this, I’m sure, because she kept launching into anecdote after anecdote, so that no interruption was possible. I noticed that Simon was equally frustrated, because he was trying to get Greg’s attention by raised eyebrows and the
like, getting more and more anxious as another half hour went on. Finally, when Jane stopped to draw breath—and another three ounces of beer—Simon jumped in.

“Greg, would it be possible to have a word at the bar? It’s about the, er…thing.”

Greg blinked and then shock registered as he understood what his friend was talking about. Neither Jane nor I knew, that was for sure. “Oh, certainly. Ladies, if you would excuse us for just a moment?”

“Why excuse you? What are you talking about?” Jane said. “Why can’t I hear?”

Long pause. “It’s a surprise, Jane.” He kissed her very tenderly on the head. “We’ll only be a moment, and then we’ll go out for Chinese, or a curry or something, okay?”

His wife rolled her eyes, unmollified. “Well, go ahead, keep your grotty little secret, but I’m not about to—”

“I need a breath of air anyway,” I said immediately. “You guys take the table and Jane and I will take a little stroll. Come on, Jane.”

Jane got up reluctantly and then snagged her foot around the stool, falling. After another five minutes of checking her ankle and assuring her that she was fine, I was pleased that Simon and Greg shooed us from the pub, but wondered greatly what the “thing” was that needed to be so urgently and privately discussed.

The quiet outside the pub was as immediate as a blow. Not wanting to lose my momentum or my chance, I began walking briskly eastward, past the site, and down toward the new church. Jane was forced to keep up simply because I refused to slow when she asked me to. I kept going until I reached the field where I’d seen Sabine and young Tedman playing football and found a bench facing the river. I sat down and patted the space next to me. Heaving a great sigh, Jane sat down, as far from me as she could.

The moonlight shone on the water, still as sluggish as ever. I sat for a moment, watching the lights on the other side of the bank winking through the low clouds, and the humid
ity around me suggested that a low front was just starting to edge into Marchester.

“Jane, I’m really worried about you. You seemed so distraught this morning. Why don’t you tell me what happened between you and George Whiting—it was he, wasn’t it? Tell me that, tell me what went on at the police station, too. You’ll feel better if you can talk it out, I promise you.”

Jane made a face. “God, ever since Princess Di. Talk it out, get it out, and you’ll feel better.”

“Yeah, well it’s true.”

“Perhaps.” She set her jaw and looked away from me. “I rely on myself to get through these things. I take responsibility for myself and I don’t need anyone else.”

I half-nodded, noncommittally. “You don’t even need Greg?”

Jane looked scornful. “Just because we’re married doesn’t mean I expect him to look after me.”

“Greg seems to be the type who likes to look after people,” I said. “I mean, look at the way he thinks of his Auntie Mads, at the cafe. He is very thoughtful of her—”

“Oh, well, he would be, wouldn’t he?”

“—But when she started to say something that was in the slightest bit negative about you, he shut her down. I mean, it must be very hard for him, to have picked the only person in the world who won’t let him help her.”

Jane shook her head vehemently. “Oh, I let him help me. I
do
. You saw me tonight, not a word about work, paying all that attention to him? What more does he want?”

I thought that Jane’s attention to Greg might have served many purposes and it was a Band-Aid, maybe, but no solution to the sort of problems they had in their relationship. Greg probably was also interested in something a little deeper than flirtations at the pub and I hoped that he never figured out that he was, at least from my point of view, just another entry on Jane’s to-do list.

“He doesn’t mind your work,” I said. “He just wants to be a part of it, to help.”

“Every time Greg tries to help, he only makes it worse,” she said stonily.

“I find that hard to believe.”

She canted her head decidedly. “It’s absolutely so. Our house, for example. It’s really
his
house, and he thought it would save money if we stayed here, but it really just narrowed down my options, tied me to this part of the world.”

I looked around Jane’s part of the world, thinking that a house
and
a job was a far-off dream for many of my teaching friends. “And what’s so bad here?”

“Well, the university’s nice, but not really first rank.” Jane was all but pouting. “It’s too far from the center of things—”

That’s what e-mail is for, I thought. That’s why
you
make the department into something special. It’s the department, more than the school, after a certain level.

Jane continued. “And the people. Everyone’s too much in each other’s pockets. And they hate me—”

“You mean like George Whiting.”

“Oh.” Jane started, then snuck a guilty peek at me. She slumped. “This isn’t the first time we’ve butted heads. He’s been annoyed with me since I slowed down his work. Why the bloody man couldn’t realize that you just don’t go plowing through a medieval smithy, largely intact, mind you, is beyond me. So he retaliated by having some of the Unit’s money pulled by the council. Later on, when he proposed another site for a launderette, I was very pleased to stand up at the council meeting and explain why the site was inappropriate, seeing as it was up for nomination for protection. So it’s been like this forever; he’s mad, his wife’s worse.”

“I was wondering whether you couldn’t, I don’t know, smooth things out through her—her name’s Ellen, right?”

“Not a bit of it. Bloody cow had the cheek to fly in my face, try to get me to drop Julia. Said it was a disruption to the family. I ask you!”

We were getting off the track, I thought. “But this morning, he was blaming you for Julia’s death. Why would he say
that? How is that possible?” Even as I asked, I could feel my hands growing colder and clammier. Maybe it was the night air on the river, maybe it was what I was asking Jane.

There was a long silence between us, only partially filled in by the night noises on the river. I could hear something rustling in the weeds, and farther away, a frog croak seemed to echo, intensified by the still air.

Jane stared in front of her, chewing on the inside of her lip, her face drawn with fatigue. She said quietly, “The man is distraught, that’s all. Julia and I…we both generally behaved badly around each other, for all the reasons people do. I’m so sorry for that now, because I’m sure there was nothing really wrong there. It was just so easy to be tricked into thinking she was more mature than she actually was. It’s no more complicated than George wanting to find some reason for the death of his daughter. I’m not surprised he looked to me; he blames me for everything. I’m responsible for Julia going into archaeology, I’m responsible for Julia’s death…” She waved her hand about, frowning; Whiting was just one more wart on her imperfect life.

“And do the police believe him? Where’ve they left it with you?”

“I don’t know what to believe.” She snorted. “The police ‘have no further enquiries at this time,’ and I mustn’t leave town. That’s all they’ll tell me.”

“What did they ask you about, then?” I picked a long blade of grass and began to tie it into knots.

“Just things like timing. Where Julia was at certain times, what her relationships were like with the rest of the crew.” Pause. “Where I was the night of the murder.”

I paused in my grass torture. “That was your birthday dinner, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, yes, the night I stormed out on Greg,” she said, and began scuffing a deep rut into the ground underneath the bench. “They were terribly interested in that. I was just walking around that night—”

“Whereabouts?” I thought of the newspaper article describing Julia’s last known movements.

“Just all over the place, even as far as the university. I told you all this before. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular.” She looked up sharply and stopped kicking at the dirt. “Not near the construction site on Leather Street, not near the Grub and Cabbage, if that’s what you’re asking me, Emma. I just walked and thought. I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t meet anyone, just like the afternoon I was done at the station. I didn’t see anyone, didn’t run into anyone I know.”

The more she said it, the more I went cold: The lady doth protest too much, methinks. “What were her relations like with the rest of the crew?” Even as I changed the question, Jane was getting more and more impatient with me, I could tell.

“I don’t know.” Jane dismissed the question, then, after a bit of hesitation, tried to tackle it, unable to resist the challenge. “Julia wasn’t well liked. Certainly not by the girls. She was always a bit shy, which puts people off, and once she came out of her shell, she came off as too much the brain, which doesn’t often sit well.”

She shrugged restlessly. “Some of the blokes had crushes on her, probably. She could be very intense and people seem to be attracted to that. Until they realize it has nothing to do with them, as they inevitably found out.”

I wondered whether this wasn’t something that had also characterized Jane’s life and then thought again of the pictures of Julia in the darkroom.

“Was she involved with anyone?”