Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

The record consisted of both written documents and photographs. It encompassed everything from DeaStu’s American football team whose plays were called by students on the sidelines who beat an enormous drum to signal the team via vibration-code, to dances held with the aid of powerful speakers which conveyed the rhythm of the music in much the same way, to picnics and meetings in which dozens of hands moved at once and dozens of faces lit with animation.

Bernadette said over Lynley’s shoulder, “That’s called wind-milling, Inspector.”

“What?”

“When everyone signs at once like that. All their hands are going. Like windmills.”

Lynley continued through the book. He saw three rowing teams whose strokes were orchestrated by coxswains utilising small red fl ags; a ten-member percussion group who used the movement of an oversized metronome to keep their pulsating rhythm together; grinning men and women in camouflage setting out with banners that read DeaStu Search and Pellet ; a group of flamenco dancers; another of gymnasts. And in every photograph, participants in an activity were surrounded and supported by people whose hands spoke the language of commonality. Lynley returned the album.

“It’s quite a group,” he said.

“It’s not a group. It’s a life.” Gareth replaced the albums. “Deaf is a culture.”

“Did Elena want to be Deaf?”

“She didn’t know what Deaf was until she came to DeaStu. She was taught to think that deaf meant disabled.”

“That’s not the impression I’ve been getting,” Lynley said. “From what I understand, her parents did everything possible to allow her to fit into a hearing world. They taught her to read lips. They taught her to speak. It seems to me that the last thing they thought was that deaf meant disabled, especially in her case.”

Gareth’s nostrils flared. He said, “Fug at sht, fug ’t,” and began to sign with hands that pounded through his words.

“There is no fitting into a hearing world. There’s only bringing the hearing world to us . Make them see us as people as good as they are. But her father wanted her to play at hearing. Read lips like a pretty girl. Talk like a pretty girl.”

“That can’t be a crime. It is, after all, a hearing world that we live in.”

“A hearing world you live in. The rest of us without sound get on fine. We don’t want your hearing. But you can’t believe that, can you, because you think you’re special instead of just different.”

Again, it was only a slight variation on the theme Justine Weaver had introduced. The deaf weren’t normal. But then, for God’s sake, neither were the hearing most of the time.

Gareth was continuing. “We are her people. DeaStu. Here. We can support. We can understand. But he didn’t want that. He didn’t want her to know us.”

“Her father?”

“He wanted to make believe she could hear.”

“How did she feel about that?”

“How would you feel if people wanted you to play at being something you weren’t?”

Lynley repeated his earlier question. “Did she want to be Deaf?”

“She didn’t know-”

“I understand that she didn’t know what it meant at first, that she had no way of understanding the culture. But once she did know, did she want to be Deaf?”

“She would have wanted it. Eventually.”

It was a telling response. The uninformed, once informed, had not become an adherent to the cause. “So she involved herself with DeaStu solely because Dr. Cuff insisted. Because it was the only way to avoid being sent down.”

“At first that was why. But then she came to meetings, to dances. She was getting to know people.”

“Was she getting to know you?”

Gareth yanked open the centre drawer of the desk. He took out a pack of gum and unwrapped a stick. Bernadette began to reach forward to get his attention, but Lynley stopped her, saying, “He’ll look up in a moment.” Gareth let the moment drag on, but Lynley felt it was probably harder for the boy to keep his eyes fixed upon and his fingers working over the silver wrapper of the Juicy Fruit than it was for himself to wait him out. When at last he looked up, Lynley said,

“Elena Weaver was eight weeks pregnant.”

Bernadette cleared her throat. She said, “My goodness.” Then, “Sorry.” And her hands conveyed the information.

Gareth’s eyes went to Lynley and then beyond him to the closed door of the offi ce. He chewed his gum with what looked like deliberate slowness. Its scent was liquid sugar in the air.

When he replied, his hands moved as slowly as his jaws. “I didn’t know that.”

“You weren’t her lover?”

He shook his head.

“According to her stepmother, she’d been seeing someone regularly since December of last year. Her calendar indicates that with a symbol. A fish. That wasn’t you? You would have first been introduced to her round then, wouldn’t you?”

“I saw her. I knew her. It was what Dr. Cuff wanted. But I wasn’t her lover.”

“A bloke at Fenners called her your woman.”

Gareth took a second stick of gum, unwrapped it, rolled it into a tube, popped it into his mouth.

“Did you love her?”

Again, his eyes dropped. Lynley thought of the wad of tissues in the conference room. He looked once again at the boy’s pallid face. He said, “You don’t mourn someone you don’t love, Gareth,” even though the boy’s attention was not on Bernadette’s hands.

Bernadette said, “He wanted to marry her, Inspector. I know that because he told me once. And he-”

Perhaps sensing the conversation, Gareth looked up. His hands fl ashed quickly.

“I was telling him the truth,” Bernadette said. “I said you wanted to marry her. He knows you loved her, Gareth. It’s completely obvious.”

“Past. Loved.” Gareth’s fists were on his chest more like a punch than a sign. “It was over.”

“When did it end?”

“She didn’t fancy me.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“She fancied someone else.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. I thought we were together. And we weren’t. That was it.”

“When did she make this clear to you? Recently, Gareth?”

He looked sullen. “Don’t remember.”

“Sunday night? Is that why you were arguing with her?”

“Oh, dear,” Bernadette murmured, although she cooperatively continued to sign.

“I didn’t know she was pregnant. She didn’t tell me that.”

“But as to the other. The man she loved. She told you about that. That was Sunday night, wasn’t it?”

Bernadette said, “Oh, Inspector, you can’t really think that Gareth had anything to do-”

Gareth lunged across the desk and grabbed Bernadette’s hands. Then he jerked out a few signs.

“What’s he saying?”

“He doesn’t want me to defend him. He says there’s nothing for me to defend.”

“You’re an engineering undergraduate, aren’t you?” Lynley asked. Gareth nodded. He said, “And the engineering lab’s by Fen Causeway, isn’t it? Did you know Elena Weaver ran that way in the morning? Did you ever see her run? Did you ever go with her?”

“You want to think I killed her because she wouldn’t have me” was his reply. “You think I was jealous. You’ve got it figured that I killed her because she was giving some other bloke what she wouldn’t give me.”

“It’s a fairly solid motive, isn’t it?”

Bernadette gave a tiny mewl of protest.

Gareth said, “Maybe the bloke who got her pregnant killed her. Maybe he didn’t fancy her as much as she fancied him.”

“But you don’t know who he was?”

Gareth shook his head. Lynley had the distinct impression he was lying. And yet he couldn’t at the moment come up with a reason why Gareth Randolph would lie about the identity of the man who made Elena pregnant, especially if he truly believed that man might be her killer. Unless he intended to take care of dealing with the man himself, in his own time, on his own terms. And with a blue in boxing, he’d have the odds on his side if it came to taking another by surprise.