His espresso arrived, the waiter smiling at Vanessa, making conversation.
Elder eased back his chair and loosened his tie. 'The night Maddy was killed, d'you think she could have been meeting someone?'
Vanessa chewed on a strand of hair that had found its way into the corner of her mouth. 'I don't know who. And besides, why there?'
'Perhaps it was convenient. Possibly, whoever it was, they didn't want to be seen.'
'Married, you mean?'
'Either that or someone she worked with.'
'No,' Vanessa said. 'No way.'
'Why ever not?'
'It's something she was always hot on. God! She slagged me off for it enough times. Messing around on your own doorstep. Only leads to grief, she said. Course…,' looking at Elder now, 'how far that was based on personal experience, I've no idea. But she was dead right anyway.' Vanessa treated Elder to a salacious grin. 'Disaster every time. And besides, if it was serious, she'd have said something. A little hint, something. She wouldn't have kept it to herself.'
'She seems to have played her cards pretty close to her chest where her ex-husband was concerned.'
'That's different, though, isn't it?'
'Is it?'
'Yes. You know, husbands, wives, someone you're trying to pretend never existed.' Vanessa looked at her watch. 'I'd better go.'
'Okay.' Elder pushed back his chair as she got to her feet. 'If you think of anything else…'
'I'll call you,' Vanessa said.
He remembered the number of his mobile at the third attempt and she wrote it down. She glanced back through the window from the street, red mouth and dark hair, a quick smile and then gone.
Elder sat a few moments longer, collecting his thoughts, before heading towards the station.
18
Karen Shields was less than happy. Ferreting for a lost spoon that morning, she'd discovered a patch of damp the size of two large dinner plates on the wall between the cooker and the sink. Several shades of mottled grey, bubbling out from the plaster like an infection on the lungs. Then, when she'd poured milk from the carton into her coffee, instead of merging, it had floated in sour globules on the surface. And as if to cap it all, someone, using either a coin or a key, had scraped a wavering line along the near side of her car, where it was parked at the kerb outside. All this before eight o'clock.
It only needed the assistant commissioner, of all people, to summon her to his office, which, of course, within fifteen minutes of her arrival, he did. Only to keep her waiting for another five minutes outside. Karen standing there in a blue-black trouser suit, the toes of her boots pinching slightly, one heel starting to rub. If she ever got as much as an hour to herself, there was a pair of red leather Camper boots she was longing to try and bugger the expense.
'Karen. Excellent, excellent.' When Harkin finally ushered her in, he was in one of his annoyingly affable moods, all smiles and cliche. 'Just wanted to check, you know, how things were going?'
Patronising was another word for it. She preferred him when he was in a temper; she found it easier then to respond.
'Yourself and Elder, everything sorting itself out?'
Karen undid the centre button of her jacket and did it up again.
'No friction?'
She thought she'd better say something. 'No, sir. None.'
'You're sure? Because if -'
'To tell the truth, sir, we've hardly noticed he's here.'
'Stepping quietly at first, I expect. Tactful.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Because if there is anything, I expect you to bring it in here. Nip it in the bud before it takes hold.'
Gardeners' bloody Question Time, Karen thought. 'Yes, sir,' she said. 'Though I'm sure there'll be no need.'
She could just see herself running into the AC's office, like some snot-nosed kid, the kind that was always telling tales. Please, sir, Billy Bang's stolen my pencil case. Please, sir, Frank Elder's stolen my murder investigation. Don't even think about it. Anything that wanted sorting out, she'd sort it out herself.
Mike Ramsden was at his desk, chair hiked back on to its rear legs, using the end of an unravelled paper clip to clean his nails.
'Any sign of him?' Karen asked.
'Who's that?' Ramsden said.
'Mike, don't play silly buggers. I'm not in the mood.'
When are you ever? Ramsden thought. 'Okay, okay,' he said. 'He rang in, left a message. Wants us to get together this afternoon.'
'What time this afternoon?'
Ramsden shrugged his shoulders. 'Didn't say.'
Karen swore and looked at the ceiling. What did Elder think? She was going to sit around cooling her heels till he condescended to grace them with his company?
'Where the hell are Furness and Denison?' she asked.
'Chasing down one of that last set of possibles the computer spewed out. Ealing somewhere. Some poor sod living in a bloody hostel. Waste of time, if you ask me.'
'One of the last. How many does that leave?'
Ramsden leaned across far enough to snag a sheet of paper. 'Two to go. Cricklewood and Dalston.'
'Okay.' She tossed him the keys to her car. 'You can drive. We'll do Cricklewood first.'
Change at Camden and go back on the Edgware branch to Belsize Park and walk. The hospital was up the hill and then down again at the end of a roughly cobbled lane. Elder remembered these things without being able to recall precisely when he'd been there before or why. Not his part of London, after all.
The pub on the corner was advertising its New Year's Eve party. Tickets in advance, only a few remaining.
Inside the hospital the corridors were broad, the ceilings low, posters warning of the dangers of smoking and obesity hung on the walls, along with artwork, bright and gestural, from a local primary school.
The pathologist was suitably cadaverous, with slender, reedy fingers and bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose; not for the first time, Elder wondered whether we chose our professions or whether, genetically marked, they chose us.
'It's Maddy Birch you're interested in?' He spoke a precise, educated Scots that Elder associated, perhaps wrongly, with Edinburgh.
'It is.'
'You know the body's been released for burial?'
Elder nodded. 'Like I said on the phone, I'm reviewing the investigation. I thought if you could spare me some minutes of your time…'
'Fire away.'
