The Blue Last

lingo, even if you haven’t picked up Hugo Boss or Ferragamo.”

Danny made his recommendations from that day’s specials-Crispy Fish with brown sauce and Jeweled Duck. Wiggins took one, Jury the other. Danny relayed the order in rapid-fire Cantonese to the little woman who’d brought the tea. To Jury exchanges in that language always suggested a show-down, as if the participants had whipped out Uzis and fired away. Danny turned back to them, asked, “Is this visit business or pleasure?”

“Both, you could say. I’m interested in the alleged theft of paintings in the Duncan collection. Formerly, I should say, in his collection. And the consequent murder of the chauffeur driving the limo used to transport the paintings. This occurred in Wapping near the Town of Ramsgate. Wapping Old Stairs is where the chauffeur was found by Thames police.”

“How do you know whoever stopped this limousine was after the paintings?”

“For the simple reason that they were gone.”

Danny shrugged, the barest movement of his Stegna-clad shoulders. “That could have been a mere cover. Maybe they were after the chauffeur.”

At that point steaming, silver-domed dishes were delivered to the table. Danny quickly lifted each dome and checked the contents, then, in another dialect blitz, sent back the duck.

“Is it time for me to complain about police harassment?” asked Danny, in his impeccable English

“It’s been time for a long time. Trouble is, my guv’nor likes you for the murder of that pimp in Limehouse last year.”

“Ah! So he’s the mastermind behind all this.”

“Not all. But some. What did you send the Jeweled Duck back for?”

“Diamonds were paste. You’ll pardon me?”

He was off across the room to the couple who’d complained when Jury and Wiggins had preempted their table. Even though they had by now been seated and were tucking into an array of dishes, they were still angry. After Danny said a few words, they smiled and went back to their dinners. Danny had no doubt said their meal was on the house.

Nineteen

The last time Jury had been to Newcastle was several years before (he hated to think how many) when he’d worked a case in Durham. Old Washington. Jerusalem Inn. Stop while you’re ahead. Each name hit him with its little hammer blow as he stepped from the train down to the platform. Today there weren’t many passengers. He thought he would go in the station buffet and have a drink. He knew he was fortifying himself and disliked the idea. But he did it anyway.

For years he had been sending his cousin sums of money, which did little to endear him to her. She would hate to be in some way dependent upon him; he, after all, had once been the interloper; he had been the charity case.

Brendan, her husband, really did exert himself to get a job. And it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t had work in over a year. Jury knew this. Jury had gone with him once to the joke shop to look at their scant offerings. Brendan told him he was always checking with the agencies, too, never passed one, with its job “opportunities,” the cards taped up in the window announcing jobs that seemed to dissolve once you put your foot across the sill. Brendan had worked for maybe one year out of the last five. He was a nice bloke, Brendan was, who managed to hold on to a sense of humor. He loved Jury to visit for it was someone to go to the pub with, someone with money. Jury was glad to pay for the drinks for he knew Brendan genuinely liked him. Jury, after all, was “family,” which meant he was someone Brendan could be honest with.

In the station buffet, Jury got his pint refilled.

Even leaving off how high ranking he was in the police, the ones sitting in this buffet would envy him every day of their bloody lives. Imagine that one at the bar eating a sausage roll, think how he would like having digs in London where he could come and go as he wanted, not a wife who keeps letting him know what a failure he is, and no screaming kids. Imagine being able to lock the door, or go down to the pub, money and then some, to come back on his own or with someone…

Jury smiled (sure), finished his pint and left.

His cousin’s flat was located in a big red-brick house. Above the landing outside the front door were affixed six mailboxes, one for each of the flats the renovation had squeezed from its formerly spacious interior. Brendan and Sarah occupied one of the two flats on the top floor, three flights up. There was no lift. The stairs were dark except for the landing between the first and second. Every time Jury had been here, he had replaced one or more burned- out bulbs that were supposed to light the landings. It was dangerous, he’d told her, for she could make a misstep, fall and break something.

“I live by missteps,” she’d replied. It had made Jury smile, that way of putting it.

He had hoped it would be Brendan answering the door, but Brendan was out, “Looking,” Sarah said. “Come on in.”

“At least be glad he’s looking. Most aren’t.” Jury removed his coat and let it fall on a nubby-textured dark green chair.

Sarah had picked up a pale blue pillow from a blue armchair. The pillow was embroidered iris and she stood clutching it to her breasts as if some attack were imminent. But she was always like this with him. Sarah was full of these defensive gestures. She was a tightly wound woman who must be by now in her early sixties, yet for all of the strain and stress life caused her, not looking that old. If time, like acid, had scored deep grooves around her nose and mouth, she was still blessed with a sort of silky hair that even in turning gray was the soft color of autumn smoke.

“Want a beer?”

It was what she was drinking, but Jury had had too much already. His stomach was sour, more from stress than beer, he thought, but he still didn’t want any. “I’d really love some tea.”

Rising, she said (in that baiting way of hers), “My, my. You’re turning down a beer?” as if drink were a particular problem with him. Then she turned toward the kitchen, a bit of which he could spy from where he sat: the white countertop, the Aga cooker of which she was very proud.

It always began that way, some deprecating remark made in her attempt to undermine him. Though he wondered if it wasn’t really Brendan she was addressing, Brendan whose drinking was the problem. Jury sat down in the blue armchair, one of a pair and both the worse for wear. He retrieved the embroidered pillow she had tossed down and ran his thumb over its delicate embroidery and wondered if she’d done it.

He leaned back, feeling absurdly weary and knew the cause lay in coming here. But it wasn’t Sarah herself, no, it was how she stirred up a host of complex emotions about his past. His discomfort was fueled by fear. Sarah had had the upper hand-she had held every hand-when they were kids: she was older, and she belonged. That he was afraid of her struck him as ludicrous; he was ashamed of the feeling. But the fear was very old, as old as childhood.

He was being handed a mug of tea. He sat up (feeling much like an invalid). “Thanks.”

Inexplicably, she shrugged, perhaps saying, So what? I’d do it for the dustbin men. Then she sat down on the matching blue armchair with a bottle of Adnams and a cigarette. When Jury didn’t drag out his own pack, she offered him her Silk Cut. When he shook his head, she said, “Don’t tell me! You’ve stopped!”

“Right.”

Throwing back her head, she said, “Please, God, not another one. I hope you’re not about to go self-righteous on me and start lecturing.”

Jury half smiled. “Hardly. I’m in much too weak a position to do that. I could start back any day.”

There was a moment of silence as she languidly smoked, drawing in deeply, exhaling tiny smoke rings, smoking in silence. Jury would bet that Newcastle had one of the highest smoking rates in the country.

“Where are the kids?”