Ice Blue (21 page)

“Why was that?” Kate asked, taking a seat at
the dining table.

“Knowledge is power. And Ginny rarely gave
away power. That made her more alluring than any woman I’d ever
known.”

“You said Mrs. Rowland’s attempt to blackmail
Malcolm Comfrey happened some time ago. Was she planning to
blackmail Comfrey’s killer this time?” Bhar asked. “She told me and
the Chief she knew exactly who killed Comfrey, and why.”

“I think that’s what happened,” Burt said,
voice cracking. “I wanted to stay home with her tonight, but she
told me to get out. She said, ‘For God’s sake, Burt, go to the
cinema or your club or have a wank, but get out.’ She said, ‘This
is my business and you’ll thank me when I’m done.’ I didn’t argue.
I just left. Went to my gym and worked out, then had dinner. Half a
bottle of wine, too. Wasted enough time to give her all the space
she needed. I knew if I came home and found her in a triumphant
mood, she’d reward me for my obedience.”

Kate suppressed a grimace. Now that Burt’s
defenses had crumbled, she had a feeling he might reveal greater
intimacies. Did she really want to hear what a submissive type like
Burt considered a reward from his ruthless, professionally seasoned
bride?

Kate pressed on. “Who do you think Ginny
attempted to blackmail this time?”

“Had to be Ivy,” Burt sighed.

Kate and Bhar exchanged a glance. He was
getting all this down in his notes, writing as fast as an
old-fashioned shorthand secretary.

“Ivy who?’ Kate asked, her chair scraping
across the floor as she pulled it closer to Burt.

“Ivy Helgin,” Burt said, still in that sad,
disconnected tone. “Malcolm’s mistress. The woman who wanted
Malcolm to leave Madge and marry her. I didn’t see it at first. I
thought Ivy was a good-time girl who knew her place, but Ginny set
me straight. Said Ivy had smarts and ambition. Said Ivy was a girl
on the rise. Said she wouldn’t waste her time on a man like Mal –
paunchy, wrinkly, and in need of a boatload of Viagra to get it up
– unless marriage was on the table.”

Kate took a moment to process this. Bhar’s
pen scraped over his notebook paper. He turned the page, resumed
his hasty writing, and Kate spoke again.

“Tell me about Ivy.”

“Ivy.” Burt exhaled. His demeanor had become
one of a hypnotized subject – soft-spoken, unguarded, willing to
spell out the answer to any and all questions. “She’s about
twenty-eight. Tall. Red hair. Legs that go all the way up. Nice
laugh, nice smile. Ginny said Ivy sold herself as Little Red Riding
Hood. You know – tease the wolf with a covered basket and lots of
‘my, what a big dick you have.’ And Mal had to buy what was in her
basket, because he’d already conquered everything else in his path.
He had the perfect homemaker and society wife in Madge. So perfect,
he could have stood for Parliament. He’d made money. He’d wedged
his foot into the outer circle of high society. But he’d also grown
older, and weaker, and needed a saucy young rump to bring him
alive.”

“Yet he wouldn’t divorce Madge and marry
Ivy?”

Burt gave a short laugh. “Don’t you know the
law? They say reform’s on the way, but the fact is this – in this
country, at this minute, an injured wife stands to collect far
beyond her due. A straying husband puts his balls on the block and
prays the law only chops off one. Malcolm couldn’t have endured
that. Losing so much to Madge, permanently, just to make his
mistress an honest woman.”

“And you think that turned Ivy homicidal?”
Kate asked.

“Isn’t that what turns everyone homicidal? A
fuck or money? Or some combination thereof?’ Burt shrugged.

“But Ivy wasn’t included on the guest list
the night of the engagement party,” Bhar pointed out. “The party
for Jules and Kevin that went so wrong, just a few hours before
Comfrey was murdered.”

“You think Ivy had never been in Mal’s
house?” Burt asked. “Think he wouldn’t welcome her if she just
wanted to come over for a chat?”

“With Madge upstairs?” Kate reminded him,
unconvinced.

“Well, Ivy was Mal’s administrative
assistant,” Burt said off-handedly, as if he had already mentioned
it. “She turned up from time to time with legitimate business
concerns. How could Madge have known the difference?”

“Detectives!” a male voice called from behind
Kate and Bhar.

Lip curling in frustration, Kate turned to
see the tall constable Hetheridge had complimented – the one with
the flapping black coat. Inside the Rowland house, he looked even
more pasty and blonde, with wide eyes, wet hair, and a continuous
drip off his mack, as if he’d spent hours stationed in the
rain.

“Can’t this wait?” Kate snapped, impatience
unconcealed. Didn’t the constable realize the interview with Burt
Rowland had reached a critical juncture?

“I don’t think so,” the constable said.
“Chief Hetheridge told us to search for evidence. I walked every
meter of this property twice. On my second walk, I found this.” He
held up a green plastic watering can.

Before Kate indulged her temptation to
verbally abuse the dripping constable, Bhar leapt to his feet.
Peeking inside the watering can, he stiffened. Then, withdrawing a
blue latex-free glove from his jacket pocket, he pulled it on his
hand and reached inside the can. When his gloved hand reappeared,
his thumb and forefinger were attached, pincher-style, to a black
nine millimeter pistol.

“Oh, God,” Burt breathed. His eyes went wide.
“Is that what killed Ginny?”

“Very likely,” Bhar said, his gaze meeting
Kate’s. “And if it has prints, we might have our first big break in
the case.”

Hetheridge drove his Lexus back to Scotland
Yard, allowing Madge and Jules Comfrey to follow behind in a panda
car with the lights off. He had offered the police conveyance with
no expectation they would accept it – he’d anticipated outrage at
the mere suggestion, and a demand to drive themselves. Instead, the
pair agreed with a surprising lack of indignation. And it was that
meek acceptance of a ride that made him examine both women again,
using the pretense of an apology – how very sorry he was about
losing his temper – to touch each woman’s hand and stare into their
eyes.

Madge’s skin was clammy. She seemed on the
verge of exhaustion, breathing slowly and clutching Hetheridge as
if she appreciated the support. Jules, by contrast, was breathing
rapidly and in constant motion. She babbled something over his
apology, some recycled list of Scotland Yard’s flaws in general,
and Hetheridge’s flaws in particular, but he ignored the words. Of
more interest to him was Jules’s trembling hands and dilated
pupils.

Drug tests, he thought on the drive back to
Scotland Yard. His iPod, connected to the car stereo, blared a Bach
piano concerto his brain knew so intimately, he could hear it, yet
not hear it, as his mind sifted the facts of the case. Yes, he
would need to administer drug tests to both Madge and Jules Comfrey
the moment they arrived. Of course, it would be his hide peeled off
and knitted into a running suit, rather tight in the shoulders and
short in the leg, for Superintendent Deaver to wear round the gym,
if those drug tests proved negative. But they wouldn’t. Experience
assured him Jules’s, at least, would come back positive for some
stimulant. And that might go a long way toward explaining how she’d
summoned the nerve to storm a crime scene.

But why didn’t Madge stop her? Had she no
control over her daughter whatsoever?

He didn’t relish the notion of interviewing
Madge at length. He’d given her little or no thought in the last
twenty years – just another failed relationship from that period in
his late thirties to early fifties, when he’d toyed with the notion
of selecting an appropriate woman to marry and start a family with.
But it was always wrong, always forced, and he knew why – because
he was always wrong, always forced, too intent on his career, too
protective of all the male clichés: space, freedom, privacy. He
hadn’t wanted to share himself, hadn’t understood how any man – or
woman, for that matter – could be interested in signing on for such
merciless emotional exposure. Once the miseries of childhood were
escaped, once a path in the professional world was hacked clear,
why subject oneself to a new and endless round of scrutiny and
disappointment?

He’d proposed to Madge for a number of
reasons. Because she was attractive, because she was appropriate,
and because they’d shared a physical connection so intense, it
mitigated dozens of lesser complaints. But mostly he’d proposed
because his mother, enjoying – unbeknownst to everyone – her last
month on earth, had spent the family Christmas lunch excoriating
Hetheridge as a failure. According to Lady Hetheridge, even Lord
Ligon’s famously queer son had done his duty to his forbears,
married, and produced three children. Why couldn’t her own
embarrassment of a son do the same?

A month later, his mother was dead. Two
months later, Hetheridge had proposed to Madge, delighting her with
an eye-popping Cartier solitaire. He wondered if she still had it;
after breaking the engagement, he hadn’t asked for it back. He
hoped – without much hope – that she didn’t believe he had used her
coldly, and dropped her cruelly, after the initial attraction
waned. The words had come easily when he proposed to her, because
they sprang from an intellectual desire to do his duty. He hadn’t
humiliated himself with a few awkward utterances, the way he had
with Kate.

What did I say? Something about doing me an
honor, Hetheridge thought. Good God, no wonder she laughed. Didn’t
even tell her I loved her.

Of course, he’d never said it to Madge,
either. But with Kate, even if he’d been unable to force out the
words, he knew it was true. Not through experiential wisdom, or any
evidence he could bring to bear. He knew it the way he knew he was
right-handed.

Something was off – discordant – about the
Bach concerto. After a moment, Hetheridge’s brain returned fully to
the present: the road before him, the shine of headlights in the
distance, and the trill of his mobile on the seat beside him.
Muting the music, he put the phone to his ear.

“Hetheridge.”

“Chief, it’s me. Kate. Have you made it to
the Yard?”

“I’ll be there in two or three minutes.
Why?”

“Bhar and I have new information for you. Can
you put off questioning the Comfreys?”

“Not possible.”

“I don’t mean for the whole night, just until
I can get there. I’d like to bring you up to speed in person.”

“Tell me now.”

Kate sighed. “First of all, one of the
constables found a nine millimeter pistol in a watering can in the
front garden. We dispatched a courier to take it directly to
Forensic Services.”

“Excellent. Who found it?”

“The tall one. MacAllister, I think his name
is.”

“Indeed. Sharp young man. I’ll write him a
letter of commendation. What else?”

“Burt Rowland has a theory about who killed
his wife and Malcolm Comfrey. He thinks it was Comfrey’s mistress –
Ivy Helgin. She was also Comfrey’s administrative assistant. I’d
like to track her down first thing tomorrow and see what she has to
say.”

“I agree. What’s the presumptive motive?”

“According to Rowland, Ms. Helgin would have
killed Comfrey because he refused to divorce Madge and marry her.
Then she would have killed Ginny Rowland because she was trying to
blackmail her over the Comfrey murder. Apparently, the Rowlands had
significant cash flow problems, and Ginny tried her hand at
blackmail once before.”

“Good work. Ivy Helgin – is that H-e-l-g-i-n?
Fine. I’ll drop the name in front of Madge and Jules and see if it
raises any reaction. Ah – the Yard’s in sight.”

“Chief.” Kate sounded odd. “There’s one more
thing.”

Hetheridge steeled himself. For reasons he
couldn’t articulate intellectually, he wanted to sidestep this
conversation. He didn’t anticipate unkindness from Kate. He didn’t
even expect a recitation of why she didn’t share his feelings and
never could, beginning with her youth and beauty and ending with
his decrepitude and lack of attraction for her. But however she
chose to truncate this awkward episode between them, he was not
above using his position as her superior officer to put it off.

“Sergeant, unless what you have to say
pertains directly to the case, I’m afraid it will have to
wait.”

“It does pertain to the case.” Kate still
sounded odd. “The first person Ginny Rowland tried to blackmail was
actually Malcolm Comfrey. She’d found out Malcolm wasn’t Jules’s
father, and she tried to use that information to extort a half
million pounds. But Comfrey called her bluff. He said the
revelation would hurt Jules and Madge more than him, so it amounted
to nothing.”

Hetheridge pulled up to the Yard’s gatehouse,
lowered his car window, and nodded at the guard on duty. Without
requesting identification, the guard hit a button, and the
reflective white barrier gate began to lift.

“So Jules isn’t Malcolm Comfrey’s daughter.
And you consider that significant to the case? Perhaps as a
motive?” Hetheridge asked, parking in New Scotland Yard’s starkly
illuminated, mostly empty lot. Fog swirled along the ground,
thinner and patchier than usual. The night air, creeping into
through Hetheridge’s open window, was cold and damp.

“Not sure exactly how it fits in. Still
thinking about that angle,” Kate said. “Ginny discovered the truth
about Jules’s paternity during a blood drive. Apparently, Malcolm
and Madge Comfrey’s blood types are both O. Jules’s is AB negative.
Two type Os can’t produce an AB negative. Since there’s no doubt
Madge is Jules’s mum, someone other than Malcolm must be her
father.”

Hetheridge started to reply, then stopped.
His throat constricted. After a moment, he realized the thudding in
his ears was his heartbeat.