John Harvey - Ash & Bone

Elder drank the rest of his coffee.

Vicki renewed her lipstick, leaving a near-perfect impression on a folded napkin. 'I'd better be getting back to this sodding job.'

'Here. Take this.' Elder took a notebook from his pocket, wrote down his mobile number and tore out the page. 'If you do think of anything, call me.'

Vicki hesitated, then pushed the piece of paper down into the side pocket of her bag. 'Thanks for the coffee.'

'Any time.'

Elder walked with her back to her stand, where a covey of small kids, having strewn half of her leaflets across the floor, was misspelling obscenities on the white spaces of the painted board.

'Fuck off!' she shouted. 'The lot of you.'

While they jeered and whistled and offered her the finger, Elder bent down and helped retrieve the leaflets from the ground. Then he wished her well and carried on to where he'd parked his car.

'I could be back over your way Sunday evening,' Framlingham said in response to Elder's call. 'Whitestone Pond. Near the old Jack Straw's Castle. I'll be parked on the north side. Seven, give or take?'

It was dark when Elder arrived, Framlingham sitting with the car window wound part-way down, listening to a broadcast of Idomeneo from the Met.

At the aria's end, he turned the radio down to listen, Elder sitting in the passenger seat alongside.

'Of course,' he said, when Elder had finished, 'he could have been lying to her. Vicki, is that her name? Mouthing off.'

'Why would he do that?'

'Wanting to impress?'

'I don't think so.'

'Grant had someone in his pocket, is that what you're thinking?'

'Either that or the other way round.'

'He was an informer, you mean?'

'It's possible.'

'He'd be high-grade if he were. Top drawer. Not some snivelling menial of the toerag variety.'

'How easy would it be to find out?'

A smile passed across Framlingham's face. 'How difficult, you mean. That stature of informant – Covert Human Intelligence Sources, as we're supposed to call them nowadays. CHIS, can you believe that? If it hasn't got a fucking acronym, it doesn't exist. But that's by the by. All that information's kept on a closed file at the Yard. Strictly need-to-know. Senior officers only. And I mean senior.'

'That would include you, surely?'

'Given good reason, Frank, it might.'

'You'll try then?'

'It may take a day or two, but I'll try.' The moon broke through the clouds as Elder skirted the pond, heading back the way he had come.

There were times when Estelle thought it was only the garden which kept her sane. If sane was what she was. Her friends, of course, had she really had any friends, would have said, Darling, you've got the children, and while it was true that they still accounted for a large part of her life, they were no longer hers in the way they used to be. Jake acted and sounded more like his father every day, and Amber, at five and a half, was lost much of the time in a world of ballet shoes and tutus and the right shade of pink for her cardigan, the right shade of blue for the band which held back her hair.

As for Gerald, he was, of course, the perfect gentleman, so polite at times it was as if he'd forgotten who she was and imagined her some distant cousin come to stay. He left early each weekday for the City and often returned late, occasionally phoning to say he was sorry but he'd have to miss dinner, and if that happened sometimes he'd bring her flowers and a little note. Once she found in one of his pockets a card advertising a members-only gentlemen's club in Soho and she'd been careful to put it back, pleased that he'd found somewhere to relax and unwind. If he asked her for sex now it was once a month at most, the light always out beforehand; when his leg slid over hers in the way she recognised, she would put her bookmark carefully in place and excuse herself to the bathroom; quite often, by the time she returned, he would be asleep and snoring.

Estelle stood now by one of the rose beds, late morning, wearing an old green woollen coat, slacks tucked down inside calf-length Wellington boots, a pair of scuffed brown gardening gloves on her hands. The trouble with January, it was too late to plant more bulbs, too early for much else; all she could usefully do was tidy up the beds, cover the mess left by one or other of next door's cats, nip off the odd brown leaf with her secateurs.

She thought how ugly the rose bushes were, pruned back, their hard green stems poking up blind into the air.

Somewhere in her mind she heard the car approaching, then a silence, then, faint, the front doorbell. If the door to the conservatory had not been open, it was unlikely she would have heard it at all. Not that it mattered: whoever it was, another of those smartly dressed Mormons or someone collecting for the church bring-and-buy, they would soon lose patience and go away.

Nearer the bottom of the garden a sparrow was giving itself a bath in the dirt, its wings spraying up a film of loose soil. Helped by the cold air overnight, the ground had dried out quite well; the sky today a washed-out blue-grey smeared with cloud and the temperature in single figures, eight or nine at most.

The side gate clicked open and when Estelle turned she saw the black detective who had, for a moment, held her hand. Tall, she hadn't remembered her as quite so tall; as tall as Gerald she could swear, the heels of her boots making sharp indentations in the lawn.

'Mrs Cooper. Estelle. How are you this morning?' Smiling, smiling, smiling. 'I rang the bell, but I suppose being in the garden, you didn't hear. I hope you didn't mind me finding my own way round?'

'No, of course not. Not at all.' What else was she supposed to say?

'You do all this yourself?' Karen Shields said, looking round. Though in all probability meant as praise, to Estelle's ears it came out more as accusation. Is this all you do with your life?

'Gerald helps with the heavy work sometimes, that is, he used to. And Jake, now he's older, he -' Abruptly she stopped: why was she saying this?

'Estelle?' Karen asked gently. 'Are you okay?'

She looked up at her, that large commanding face with those red, red lips. Beautiful, was that the word?

'Estelle?'

'Mm? Yes, of course.' Of course what? She didn't know.

'Why don't we go inside?' Karen said. 'That cup of tea you offered last time. Something to keep out the cold.' Walking back towards the house, she took Estelle's arm.

They sat in the conservatory, the door now closed, the corners of glass beginning to mist over. Here and there a flower, brick red or butterfly white, still clung to one or other of the geraniums, their upper leaves healthy and green, those gathered round the base shrivelled brown and paper thin.

Tea was in broad-brimmed white cups with a gold line faded around the rim; the china teapot in its cosy sat on a tray with a matching milk jug and sugar bowl, though the sugar remained untouched. Rich tea biscuits fanned out on a plate. Paper serviettes.

Karen took her time, listening while Estelle pecked at conversation like a bird, waiting for what might be an opportune moment.

In the end she dropped her question into the silence, like a pebble falling slowly into the well.

'Estelle, I know this will be difficult, and if there was any way I could avoid asking you I would, but when you said there were things Steven Kennet wanted you to do, things you felt uncomfortable with, I need you to tell me what they were.'

Estelle's hand shook and tea spilled from her cup into her saucer and from there into her lap. 'How silly of me,' she said, dabbing at it with her serviette. 'I'm sorry, what was it you said?'

When Karen left an hour and a half later, her face was rigid with anger and hurt, her mind alert. During the course of their relationship Kennet had persuaded Estelle to take part in a number of scenarios in which they played out the act of rape. Sometimes where they were living, sometimes in cheap hotels, and sometimes, after dark, on Wimbledon Common and Hampstead Heath.