The Lamorna Wink

responses to small things.

“And I’ve always known she married Danny for his money. Danny”-he looked at them sadly-“never wanted to leave here. Karen was the one who was always agitating to go back to London.”

“She told me,” said Melrose, “just the opposite. She told me a story that was half fact and half fantasy. I think she wanted to make sure police understood there were other people on the scene because she was afraid your son would come under suspicion.”

“You mean that she would.” Moe sighed. “She’d want to convince the world she’s the inconsolable mother. It’s Danny who’s inconsolable.” He looked around the beautiful room as if the blue had fled from it, as if it were drained of color. “Will we ever know what really happened?”

Plant had gone to call the Penzance police station, where Jury now imagined Macalvie questioning Brenda Friel. He said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Bletchley. We’ll know.”

62

He’d been here in one of the interrogation rooms of the Penzance police station for half an hour, waiting for her to say something.

Brenda Friel hadn’t gotten beyond hello and asking for a cigarette.

“Where are the video tapes, Brenda?”

Macalvie assumed she wasn’t going to answer that question, either. She surprised him, even though the answer was a question.

“What tapes?”

“The film Simon Bolt took for you and for himself, presumably to peddle over the Internet. A good crossover between snuff film and kiddy porn. The one Sada Colthorp had when you shot her.”

Her smile was all for herself. Hemmed in, parsimonious, nothing left over, not even bad humor, for anyone else. God knows not for him.

Despite her relentless silence, Macalvie was getting to her; he could feel it. It was an odd chemistry; he’d felt it before with suspects. It wasn’t his experience as a policeman or his cleverness that was getting through. It was something else, some quality in himself that the person under question seemed to think they shared. Macalvie hated the feeling. Not that he empathized, not that he understood. Some killers he did come to understand. Brenda wasn’t one of them. It made him uncomfortable to sense she didn’t believe this. That’s your problem, boyo.

“Yeah, a real classic,” he went on, “that film. I can see the pedophiles slobbering all the way from Bournemouth to John o’Groat’s.”

Her eyes were sparking now, live wires touched to some electrical source. Anger? Good.

“But it didn’t start out that way, Brenda.” He got up and walked over to a little window, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, holding back his raincoat. “Before Ramona died you wouldn’t in a million years have thought of having a sociopath like Bolt follow those kids to their deaths. I can see it, I can just see it. Noah and Esme-” He looked round at her, sitting there, not looking at him. The children’s names touched off nothing in her-no sympathy, no remorse. At least, these emotions weren’t present on her face.

He went on. “You know what I’ve been wondering? How it is you didn’t send the tape to Morris Bletchley. Wasn’t that the idea? Make him suffer as much as you had?”

“No.”

Macalvie kept himself from turning round, from registering surprise. He was surprised the film hadn’t served the double purpose as instrument of death and sadistic revenge.

“Not knowing is worse. Now, though, I would. I’d like to rub his face in it,” said Brenda. “By taking Ramona into that house, he killed her as surely as if he’d held a gun to her head.”

Fucking melodrama, thought Macalvie. “Seems to me Mr. Bletchley provided your daughter with safe harbor. Would you rather have had her wandering all over London? You never wanted her to go, and she didn’t communicate with you.” That Bletchley could be seen as a savior, Macalvie knew, would fuel her rage.

“Safe harbor? Throwing Ramona into bed with a bloody gay chauffeur who’d got AIDS?” She made a noise in her throat of disgust, dismissal.

Macalvie did turn around then. “Morris Bletchley-” No. Don’t defend him anymore, even though God knows the man deserves someone’s defending him. “I guess that wasn’t very smart of him.”

Her sour laugh was more a snarl.

“He paid a heavy price, Brenda. His grandchildren.”

“No price could have been too heavy.”

She was not crying, but tears were clotting her throat. It was thick with them. Wait. Wait for a moment. Macalvie leaned wearily against the cold wall, as if sick of death. The weariness was not an act. He was drowning in it.

Her only child. He could sympathize with that part of it, certainly. Then it occurred to him, and he was surprised by the conviction. “You didn’t see it. The film. You didn’t watch it.” Now he was leaning on the table, arms rod- straight. She looked up at him, disclosing nothing. He said, “You weren’t there when Simon Bolt shot that film. You didn’t see it.” He could have hit her. You bitch!

And then he realized she’d finally admitted her tie to Simon Bolt. She’d forgotten herself enough to do this, just as he’d forgotten himself enough to want to kill her. “Tell me how he did it.”

She actually shrugged, as if it were really no affair of hers, since she hadn’t been there. “He had what I guess you’d say was an assistant. I imagine Simon Bolt had a string of assistants, including Sadie May. They met up with the Bletchley children in the woods just beyond their house, several times. He took pictures, Polaroid shots, which he showed me. Nothing nasty, of course. They might have reported that to the grown-ups back at the house. He merely took pictures of them playing. Told them he was a filmmaker and showed them one. He had this little telly, you know, screen hardly as big as your hand. Anyway, he told them he could do one of them, if they fancied it. He found out a lot about the Bletchleys, about the boat down at the bottom of the stone steps. I expect he just made up a story to get them to go down there, or the girl did. Or the girl led them down there just when the tide was coming in. I don’t know. I didn’t ask for details.” Her voice took on a colorless, hollow quality, as if she were forever removed from what she was describing.

She was, thought Macalvie. She had arranged this but hadn’t had the courage to look at it. That way, perhaps in her own mind, it had happened without her. “He would have given you a tape. A copy. He’d keep a couple for himself.”

“Oh, he did. Said it was for proof. Well, I didn’t need proof, did I? They were drowned. Proof enough there. The Bletchleys left Seabourne. End of that marriage for all intents and purposes.”

“Yet Morris Bletchley didn’t leave. He stayed. He would have stayed through hell rather than desert his grandchildren. He must have looked at it that way.”

She didn’t comment.

“Sada Colthorp put you in touch with Bolt.”

“She told me about him. I’d never have used her as a go-between. She couldn’t be trusted. Obviously.”

“Sada came back a couple of weeks ago and tried to blackmail you. She had a copy of that tape, or maybe it was Bolt’s copy that she found in the house. Only there was nothing on that tape to link you to the children. You’d been very careful. It was only her word against yours. You thought she’d be believed instead of you?”

“Her word was what she intended to whisper in Morris Bletchley’s ear. Along with giving him that tape. Him seeing that tape? Why, he’d have turned heaven and earth upside down to discover who was responsible, and if she told him it was my idea, he’d concentrate on me. He’d have had me investigated in a way police don’t have time for-they’ve got a hundred other people, a hundred other murders to deal with. Morris Bletchley would only have me. Even if he couldn’t prove it, even if he couldn’t satisfy himself, Moe Bletchley would’ve hounded me the rest of my life.”

“But Chris Wells?” Macalvie didn’t have to frame a question or a conclusion. She had reached that point where it was in for a penny, in for a pound. She was even more tired than he was; she figured she might as well tell the