“Why? I’m interested.”
“I just didn’t love her enough.” Vernon rinsed out his and Jury’s cups, saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’m switching to whiskey. Want some?”
“Thanks. Just soda it up a lot.”
“Worried about your drinking? You can always visit SayWhen.” Vernon told him about it.
Jury laughed. “Great idea. But that’s not my reason. It’s because I’m taking some sort of medication.”
Vernon was at the drinks table uncapping what looked to Jury like a fifth of Glenfiddich. “What kind of medication?”
“Dimerin, I think it is.”
“Oh, that stuff. It won’t hurt. You could mix it with engine oil and it wouldn’t do a thing to you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I own thirty-three percent of the company. I got in on their IPO. I don’t do that sort of thing blindfolded. I really find out about their product. This particular corporation’s stock is going to split soon-”
Jury smiled. “Save me the details of corporate finance. It’s all lost on me.” That sounded properly stuffy. Or superior. Why was Rice bringing out the worst in him? Or perhaps it was himself, bringing out the worst.
“Poor you. It’s really very entertaining.”
“Entertaining? That’s what you do it for?”
“No. I do it for the money.”
Jury laughed and took a sip of the whiskey. It was very mellow. “Let’s get back to love. You said you didn’t love her enough. How did you know in the end that you didn’t?”
For a moment Vernon merely stared at his glass. Then he slid down on the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “Because when she went away I didn’t miss her. Because I could stand having her out of my sight; because I didn’t want to touch her every time I saw her; because I didn’t have the urge to buy her flowers every time I passed a flower stall; because I didn’t look for her around every corner; because she wasn’t in my head every time I looked up from a market report; because she didn’t make me feel stoned-and didn’t make me feel glad I wasn’t; she didn’t fire up my imagination; she didn’t make me forget the gloom of the past, as the song goes. Because she didn’t make me almost wish she’d disappear so I could find her.”
That hung in the air while Vernon studied the diamond facets of the glass he seemed to have been committing to memory as one would a woman’s face, which, in all likelihood, one would never see again. “It was like that.”
Jury hardly knew what to say. “It was?”
“Yeah. Really adolescent. Not what you’d call real love, I guess.”
Jury looked at him. “If it isn’t, maybe it ought to be.” Jury drained his glass. “I appreciate your time. I’ve got to go.” He rose.
Vernon went to the door with him. “You’ll find her.”
It wasn’t a question.
Jury never made promises about the outcome of a case, and this one surely would end badly, if it ended at all. That’s what worried him, that it never would. “I’ll try.”
It wasn’t an answer.
“I’m going to Wales,” Jury said, taking a stool beside Melrose in the Grave Maurice.
“
“There’s a woman there who knew Dan Ryder. I want to talk to her.” When the turbaned barkeeper stopped in front of him, Jury ordered whatever was on tap. Then he said to Melrose, “I see what you mean about him.”
“What do I mean?”
“About Vernon Rice. He’s one of the most likable men I’ve ever met.”
“Told you.”
Jury turned and smiled at Plant. “That only makes me that much more suspicious.”
THIRTY-THREE
It was a gloomy day, even by January’s standards. Ver-It was a gloomy day, even by January’s standards. Vernon matched it well. He had just returned the receiver to its cradle and was standing before the big office window with its view of St. Paul’s, or at least of its spire. Too many buildings were crowding into the City and ruining some of London’s views. He couldn’t turn his thoughts to that for very long or to much else. He hadn’t liked the conversation with Leon Stone.
“With nothing new by way of either evidence or information, I’ve run up against a blank wall.” Pause. “Vernon, I know it’s hard for you to hear, but I honestly think Nell Ryder’s dead.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“That’s wishful thinking on your part.”
“No, it isn’t. Wishful thinking is thinking you can sell ten thousand shares of British Telecom short and make a killing.
Leon Stone sighed. “I hate to keep taking your money.”
“First time I ever heard anyone say that.” Vernon had laughed, not joyfully. Then he’d hung up.
He wanted Leon Stone to believe at least in part that Nell was still alive. Arthur didn’t, not anymore, Vernon was sure. He stood at the window and went back over her disappearance again. The trouble with this was it was the same old track; he wished his mind would derail, shake itself up a bit.
That police superintendent, Jury, was the only new thing that had entered the picture. Seemed pretty smart, maybe he’d come up with something. Vernon swiveled his chair around and sat down in it, back on track, going over it all again.
“Want a ploughman’s?” Samantha put her head around the door.
The door was always open, but she seemed to like this sort of hugger- mugger approach.
He looked around. “No thanks.”
“I’m bringing something back for Daph and Bobby. You sure?”
“I’m sure. You know it’s raining like hell.”
“It’s always raining like hell. See you later.”
He supposed she was leaving; he couldn’t hear her; the carpet was so thick in the outer office you could deploy an elephant herd and not hear it.
“Bye,” he said to something as he looked at his TV screens, market reports on CNN and the BBC. He muted the sound and spent a few minutes watching the ticker tape. Then he got up, reached for his laptop, looked at what was there, from the laptop to the desktop, not much happening.
“Vernon.”
Vernon looked over his shoulder and froze. He dropped the laptop and felt the pain only as some vague reminder you couldn’t drop heavy objects on your foot and not feel it.
“Vernon,” said Nell, “I need your help.”
