Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

That done, she’d go to the pictures. On her own. Walk it, it wasn’t that far to Whiteley’s. If she was going to see them anywhere, she thought, it would be in the underpass by Royal Oak station, though she’d no special reason to associate either of them with tunnels under roads. And they weren’t there, not even their muttering voices. Something called The Insider and something else called The Beach were the choices before her. She chose the latter and had to sit through a story about a bunch of teenagers in some foreign place.

A man came and sat beside her and offered her a Polo mint. She shook her head and said no, but of course it reminded her of Jock, and when the man put his hand on her knee she remembered how she’d told Jock she was his and would be forever. There’d never be anyone else. It made no difference that Jock had stolen all her money. She picked up the man’s hand, digging her nails into the back of it until he cried out. Then she moved three seats along the row and after a minute or two he left.

When she came out of the cinema it was dark and no longer very warm. She walked up toward Edgware Road and waited for a 36 bus. It was while she was standing there, quite alone, in a dreary, isolated place near Paddington Basin, that she saw Auntie sitting on the seat under the bus shelter. She wasn’t as clear as Jock had been but a shape that you could see through, a semitransparent entity that was nevertheless unmistakably Auntie from her iron gray hair in a coil on the back of her head and her rimless glasses to her sensible black lace-up shoes.

Minty wasn’t going to speak to her, she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction, but she did wonder if taking the vase away and throwing out the dead flowers was what had brought her back in visible form. Of Mrs. Lewis there was no sign. Minty stared at Auntie, and Auntie purposely looked away toward the bridge over the canal. Within a few minutes the double-decker came. I’m not getting on it if she does, Minty said to herself. But when the bus stopped Auntie got up and went away toward the underpass.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Minty said as she passed her money to the driver.

“You what?”

A lot of people were staring at her.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said to the driver, and to the rest of them, “or any of you.”

She went upstairs to the top, to escape them.

NEVER IN HIS life, as far as he could recall, had Jims been so angry, and his anger was compounded in part of rage and in part of fear. Up to a point he was an imaginative man and he saw his career lying in smithereens while ever before him loomed the ogrelike shape of the Opposition chief whip.

He was lying in bed in Fredington Crucis House, having dutifully listened to an hour of the Today program on his bedside radio. At eight-thirty Mrs. Vincey brought him up a cup of tea-something she’d never done before-and two tabloid newspapers. They must have been her own, for Jims took no papers in the country and, if he had, would never have chosen these. He’d often thought she hated him and now he was sure of it.

This was the day he was supposed to go over to Shaston and support the Conservative candidate. He pictured the media with their cameras and recording devices waiting for him and was just making up his mind not to go because it would do more harm than good to the Party, when the phone rang.

It was Ivo Carew. “Look, lovey, I’ve got a confession to make. I told the cops about you skiving off our luncheon. I more or less had to. They asked me.”

How they could have when he hadn’t even mentioned Ivo’s existence to them, Jims couldn’t imagine. “Have you seen the papers?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“What am I going to do?”

“Well, my old love, in your place I’d pretend I didn’t know. I mean, about the husband still being the husband.”

“I didn’t know.”

Ivo plainly didn’t believe him. “I’d simply maintain my innocence. Stoutly maintain it. A bridegroom”-he sniggered nastily at the word-“can’t be expected to scrutinize his bride’s divorce papers. She said she was divorced and you accepted it.”

Jims said nothing.

“Why on earth did you marry her?”

“I don’t know,” said Jims. “It seemed a good idea at the time.”

“Shall I come over, lovey?”

Get into bed with him, no doubt, and further complicate things, not to mention old Vincey, downstairs but with her ears on stalks. “Better not. I’m going home.”

Showered and dressed, Jims felt slightly better, though in no fit state to eat the plateful of fried eggs, bread, bacon, and potatoes swimming in fat, unaccountably prepared for him. He drank a cup of Nescafé and reconstituted milk. Were things quite so bad as he’d thought at first? As a politician, Jims believed that there were few situations in public life that couldn’t be remedied with the right strategy, few errors that couldn’t be made good by (apparent) frankness, sincere apology, and an earnest air of innocence. And he was innocent. What more likely than that two people like Zillah and Jerry Leach, feckless and sloppy, had shacked up together and had two kids without ever marrying? Of course he’d believed her. He could say something about her first marriage being too painful for her to wish it commemorated in any document. That would do. Well, no, it wouldn’t do, but it would help.

Probably the best line to take would be that he hadn’t known. Zillah believed herself divorced and, now that Jeffrey Leach was dead, he-Jims-would make everything good by immediately remarrying the widow. Did he really want to do this? Of course not. He’d rather never see her again. But he didn’t have a choice. Needs must when the devil drives, and the devil had never driven harder and faster than this. They could always get divorced when the fuss died down. Perhaps he should issue a statement. Call Malina Daz now and get her to help him word it. It would still be too late for the Evening Standard . Best go home first, work out the statement in his head on the way, and talk to that unspeakable little bitch Zillah he wished he’d never set eyes on in the first place. He’d call Malina on his car phone and then he’d call Leonardo.

But perhaps he did have a choice. Perhaps there were other options. He picked up the phone and dialed Ivo’s mobile. When all was said and done, Zillah wasn’t very bright.

Michelle didn’t much care about her and Matthew being suspected of murdering Jeffrey Leach, as she’d had to learn to call him. That was an exaggeration. Of course she would care if they really suspected them, if all that questioning hadn’t been just routine. They had to ask questions, it was their job. She and Matthew were still treating it as a joke. They’d even given jokey names to the principal police officers, calling the woman Miss Demeanor and the man Violent Crimes. But even if they’d truly put Mr. and Mrs. Jarvey of Holmdale Road, West Hampstead, on their list of suspects and had real suspicions about them, that would be nothing to Fiona’s betrayal.

When they’d called yesterday morning, and wanted to know where she and Matthew had been a week ago on the day Jeff was killed, when they’d said she understood they’d disliked Jeffrey Leach and made it plain they did, she’d asked them how they knew that. Of course, they wouldn’t tell her; they’d said they weren’t able to divulge that information. But Michelle knew and the knowledge lacerated her. Only Fiona could have told the police for no one else had heard of their dislike. She and Matthew were barely acquainted with anyone else, apart from her sister and his brother, whom they hardly ever saw and would never have confided in. Fiona knew the Jarveys didn’t like her fiancé-she and Michelle had discussed it-and, when asked if Jeff had any enemies, named the people next door. Her friends. The woman who loved her as a mother might and who thought herself loved in daughterly fashion in return. It was monstrous. Didn’t Matthew think it was, asked Michelle in tears.