Death in Elysium Read online

  Sian, whose insouciant carapace had cracked only briefly in the car, was now ensconced in front of my computer, not playing games but developing her programming skills. She’d been engrossed for about an hour when she started to lose concentration. She agreed she might be hungry, though she swiftly declined biscuits: they brought her out in spots, she said. She wasn’t keen on a sandwich that didn’t contain ham, and eyed with the gravest doubt the basic hummus I whizzed up. Tinned chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, salt, cumin, tahini and a blender – I couldn’t go wrong there, because it was one of my party staples, as were my variants. I divided the mush into three bowls, adding chopped coriander to one, sun-dried tomatoes Sian herself had put through the blender to another, and puréed sun-dried peppers to a third. It was the culinary equivalent of finger painting, but it kept her mind off things.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jodie, I thought Mazza said you didn’t like cooking.’ She stuck a finger in the first, scooped and sucked. She was just about to use the same finger to test the next when she stopped. ‘Where d’you keep your spoons? God, these are great.’

  It wasn’t long before Dave dot-and-carried himself into the kitchen to join us. I was about to warn him that eating normally while you couldn’t exercise normally was a weight-gain disaster, something I’d learned the hard way, but the expression on his face made Sian grab my hand with a scream. He made matters worse by saying in heavy police tones that he’d like a quiet word with me.

  I put my arms round her and sat her down. ‘She’s not a child, Dave.’

  ‘If it’s … I mean, I need to—’

  ‘Oh, I’ve not heard about your mum or Mazza yet,’ he said, as if already bored with teenage emotion. ‘But I have had a call from Daniel. It wasn’t just tripwires he found on that sheep-track, Jodie. He found remains. They may be human.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Full marks for tact, Dave,’ I said, as I tried to revive Sian, out in a dead faint on the kitchen floor. It could just as easily have been me, but feeling her slide from my grasp had somehow galvanized me and I’d caught her before she – or I – could fall. Now she was flat on the kitchen floor, legs raised on to the chair next to the one on which Dave had propped his leg while he sat giving me quite unnecessary first aid instructions. ‘She and Burble were … close.’ As were Burble and I, if in a totally different way.

  ‘No one told me,’ he protested. ‘Might have guessed,’ he conceded. ‘Shit, Jodie, I shouldn’t be here, dossing round like this. I should be out there with the recovery team. Would have been eighteen months ago.’

  ‘Even if you were still working, with that ankle you’d be on sick leave or – what do they call them? – light duties,’ I pointed out with admirable lack of logic. I was spared what I suspected would have been an extremely acid response when the doorbell rang. Rosemary McVicar. We exchanged the smiles of polite but cautious acquaintances. She blinked first.

  ‘It was so good to meet you properly, Jodie. I’d heard so much about you,’ she declared, with the sort of grin that made you think she was already a friend.

  I nearly riposted that I’d heard so much of her, but buttoned my lip. We might have got over any possible embarrassment during our muted exchange this morning, and in any case I blamed Dave for assuming he could simply bring his partner here. And then I wondered why on earth he shouldn’t. We lived in a house, not a church. Please, don’t let me start thinking Merry’s thoughts! Flinging the door wide with a welcoming sweep of the arm – that wasn’t very Merry-ish; I felt better already.

  As she stepped inside, Rosemary dropped her voice. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Not of Carrie Burns. And her son’s gone along with Theo to make a voluntary statement, or at least say what his lawyer says he can say. But Dave’s just had a phone call. They’ve found a body.’

  She put her hand on my arm. ‘Not that lad you’ve been worried about? Bumble? No, that’s the cricket commentator.’

  If she knew that, sometime in the summer I must invite her to my St John’s Wood pad and let her watch the cricket from my balcony. Dave didn’t care for the game, and Theo had only limited enthusiasm.

  I flashed her a smile to show I’d registered more than a slip of the tongue, but shook my head. ‘Our lad’s called Burble. As for the … the remains … they don’t know who it is. Even if it is a who, not a what. Just that … something … was found on the hillside the far side of the village. But Carrie Burns’ daughter’s in the kitchen, having fainted dead away thinking they’ve found the body of her boyfriend, who’s been missing for some days now. Dave’s keeping an eye on her.’

  ‘Do you want me to make a highly unofficial call?’ She flourished her mobile. ‘See what I can find out? I might be freelance now, but I’ve got mates still working for the police.’

  ‘I’ll take over from Dave and send him into the living room. You can fill him in without Sian overhearing.’

  She put a hand on my arm. ‘Talking about overhearing – I’m really sorry. Poor old thing had lost his mojo after his enforced retirement. I reckon that’s why he did that crazy bike trip. And then the thought of being crippled, if only for a few weeks … Anyway, as you’ll have gathered, he seems to have got it back. But—’

  ‘Forget it. I have,’ I lied. ‘More important things to think about.’ Which was true.

  Sian had regained consciousness, but Dave had ensured she stayed lying down by dint of pressing one of his crutches against her shoulder. ‘Now you can think about getting up, with Jodie here to catch you if needs be. Easy does it, both of you.’

  ‘Yes, nurse,’ Sian said with a cocky tilt of her chin. But she consented to be helped up and accepted a couple of squares of my favourite Divine chocolate. She even managed a pale grin when she registered the name. ‘Didn’t know vicars had to have special food,’ she said. But she ended on a sob. ‘It’s not fair, Mum and Mazza being arrested for something they didn’t do. And now – oh, what if it is Burble?’ She clutched my hand painfully.

  I dealt with the first point first. Easier all round. ‘Your mum and Mazza have top class solicitors to look after them.’

  ‘How come?’ She narrowed tear-filled eyes. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? Why?’

  ‘Same reason as I got Mazza running and you working up your computer skills.’

  ‘Ah. Your do-gooding,’ Sian declared accusingly. ‘That’s what Mum says it is. Do-gooding,’ she repeated. ‘Same as when you lent Burble your camera. Which may be why he’s dead.’

  I couldn’t argue – it was what I’d been thinking myself, after all. The front door opened and voices reached us: Theo, Mazza and Carrie.

  ‘That’s enough from you, my girl,’ Carrie declared, surging in. ‘Jodie’s mates have saved us from a hell of a mess.’

  Mazza had picked up the rest of what Sian had said. ‘What’s that about Burble?’

  Theo, dazed-looking but perhaps on automatic pilot, had boiled the kettle and made a big pot of horrible vicarage tea-bag tea. Somehow all our guests sat down. But he stopped dealing out mugs to look at me, still standing.

  I gripped the back of a chair, looking at the white knuckles as if they belonged to someone else, and updated them. ‘Doctor McVicar,’ I concluded, ‘the forensic scientist who joined us this morning, Carrie, is here, trying to get some hard news for us.’

  ‘News she’d rather hear in private,’ Carrie observed shrewdly but not necessarily wisely, given the effect it had on her children, who, if they’d been white before, were now green.

  ‘News she needs to be able to hear – there’s a much better signal in the living room,’ Theo said sharply. Then he grabbed the conversation and turned it in a slightly less sensitive direction. ‘Thanks to Jodie, the police had to bag all the bikes they found in Carrie’s garden. Then Doctor McVicar suggested they check them for Mazza’s DNA – and Carrie’s and Sian’s, of course – before any charges could be brought. She, like Jodie, thinks that someone planted them there.’ He paused to smile at me. ‘As do the legal team w
ho turned up mob-handed at the police station. They pulled together Dave’s tripwire injury, your tyres being slashed, Jodie, and the speed with which the police arrived after Carrie’s discovering the bikes, as evidence that something bigger might be in train. Oh, and I mentioned your being run down that night.’

  ‘And were they impressed?’ I asked.

  ‘The legal team yes; the police no. They refused point blank to waste their budget – though they called it Public Money – on something as trivial as bike theft. So I’m afraid Doctor McVicar will have to do that privately.’

  ‘How much will that cost?’ Carrie was now as pale as her kids.

  ‘Didn’t you hear her say this morning that she’d bill me? Mates’ rates,’ I declared cheerfully. Or as cheerfully as I could manage – in reality, as we heard the sound of the living room door, our expressions froze and we held our collective breath.

  Rosemary actually tapped at the door as she put her head round it. ‘It’s news and not news. The pathologist confirms that the remains are human so a PM will be held. They’re also working on the person’s ID. But at this stage I can tell you that they’ll rule nothing in and nothing out. They simply don’t have the resources to fast-track DNA and other forensic tests. So I’m sorry, there’s really nothing more that I can tell you.’

  Theo put three mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits on a tray. ‘I’ll carry it – years of training. After you, Rosemary,’ he insisted brightly, clearly, to my eyes, going to extract information Rosemary hadn’t shared with the Burns family.

  I spread my hands helplessly. ‘Carrie, is there anything I can do to help? I wish I could offer you our spare room for a nap before you have to go to work—’

  She laughed, not unkindly. ‘Nap? Don’t tell the boss but there’s a nice quiet corner I can usually get a bit of shut-eye in. I’m not one to ignore an emergency bell, though, not like some I could name. I reckon it’s easier to get the old dear a bedpan than have to change stinking sheets later. And better for them, of course,’ she added quickly, ‘though most of them are so doolally they don’t even know they’re in a bed, let alone a wet one.’

  ‘What about you two?’ I asked the kids. ‘Do you want to camp here like you did before or would you like me to come down and sleep at your place – if that’s OK by you, Carrie?’

  ‘Babysit us, like?’ Sian shot at me.

  ‘Be with you to pass on any news,’ I said evenly.

  ‘News? Overnight? No, the filth are nine till five now,’ Mazza said. He remembered, belatedly perhaps, that I was an ally. ‘No, you’re all right, Jodie, thanks all the same.’ Which I took to mean they’d rather manage without me.

  ‘You’ll call me if there are any problems, any at all,’ I said. It was more a statement than a question. ‘Now, what about food? Everyone knows I can’t cook cakes for love nor money, but you should try my curries.’

  Sian made a wonderful retching noise; I was ready to be offended, but suddenly I knew that she’d treated me as a mate – and what greater honour was there than that? ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ I laughed. ‘How about Chinese? I’m a dab-hand with stir-fries.’ And I had those lovely new pans to try out.

  ‘I think you’ve been reading John’s Gospel about feeding the five thousand,’ Theo said as he washed the wok. ‘Loaves and fishes, sweetheart.’

  ‘I’ve got that far. But why John’s version?’

  He started on the sauté pan, which had done sterling service as a substitute second wok. ‘Because that’s the only account of the miracle that includes someone donating food out of the goodness of their heart.’

  I wrinkled my nose. ‘But wasn’t it a little boy who did that?’

  ‘The point is that it wasn’t one of the disciples, who were supposed to do good. The boy was what our American friends might call just an ordinary guy.’

  ‘I don’t think a parson’s wife quite qualifies as an ordinary guy,’ I demurred. ‘Anyway, I like cooking Chinese. And getting the kids to prepare the vegetables took their minds off things. I thought Rosemary did a good job too, getting Dave to tell us his better police stories.’ We’d all ended up with tears of laughter. ‘She’s wasted on him.’

  ‘A lot of people would say that about you and me,’ he said quietly. ‘A millionaire giving up everything—’

  I put my finger to his lips. ‘Ah, but I didn’t, did I? And thank goodness I didn’t, or how would I have paid all those no doubt eye-watering legal and forensic bills? There are times,’ I said, stowing the new wok in the cupboard, ‘when Monopoly money is quite useful. And I’ve got an idea lurking at the back of my head that means we might just need some more.’ What I should have said, of course, was that even if I’d given up everything to marry him I’d have counted myself a winner. I’m sure Merry would have – probably did.

  But he didn’t seem to have noticed. He was too busy giving a final polish to the sauté pan. ‘More saucepans as good as these?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Those too,’ I agreed peaceably, tucking my arm in his and leading him off to bed.

  SEVENTEEN

  After coming up to the rectory for a short run with me – tacitly we agreed to avoid the long run along the ridge, and not just because it was cold and wet – Mazza mooched off to see which of his mates he could rouse at the unearthly hour of eleven, pointing out that if he couldn’t get them out of bed the prospect of a job wasn’t likely to. ‘Unless that mate of yours would give me a bonus for everyone getting to work on time,’ he said with a grin.

  Reminding him by example that he ought to warm down with a good stretch, I joked, ‘You could always suggest it.’

  He grinned, still jogging on the spot. ‘Look, I’ll see you, right?’ And off he ran.

  Dave was ensconced in the living room, of course, his injured leg propped up. With no Mazza to challenge, how would he amuse himself? But my cousin could still surprise me. Eschewing the delights of daytime TV, he was engrossed in a good thick book, Crime and Punishment, no less.

  ‘When I got slung on the scrap heap,’ he declared, patting the spine as if it was a friendly dog, ‘I told myself I’d read at least one good book a month. You know, a real classic. To make up for what I missed when I was young. Theo, who seems to have a better sense of humour than I gave him credit for, found me this.’ Back went the reading glasses: I was dismissed. At least I could guarantee that I could shower in peace – even if the water soon ran cold. I longed for my apartment’s unlimited supplies. Theo had worked hard to clear his appointments so we could travel up this afternoon and have our London time tomorrow. But we wouldn’t be going tomorrow, would we? Neither of us would want to leave people who might need us if the news was what the pit of my stomach told me it would be – that the body was Burble’s.

  My hair still wet, I ran downstairs. ‘Dave, I won’t have to identify the remains, will I?’

  He heaved himself to his feet and gave me a cousinly bear-hug, which was just what I needed, apart from one of his crutches slithering from his arm and crashing down my shin. ‘Good news, bad news? Well, you might as well have the bad. According to Rosie’s contact, there’s not a lot of him to identify.’

  ‘Him?’ I repeated sharply.

  ‘The pelvic bones. The usual give-away. As for the flesh and other tissue, the weather’s been warm, and—’

  ‘Scavengers?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ I felt his ribs expand as he took a deep breath. ‘Again according to Rosie’s source, there was wire nearby. The lad may have fallen and – with luck – broken his neck.’

  We both knew what the alternative to a swift merciful death might be.

  ‘But we won’t know anything yet. The post-mortem’s not scheduled till Thursday. Cuts, Jodie, cuts! And no, you’ll have to wait for the official post-mortem before you can commission a private one. So you and Theo might just as well shove off and enjoy a day’s breather – get your strength up for when the results come out.’

  I shook my head firmly.
r />   But then came an onslaught: ‘Have you looked in the mirror recently, my girl? I know we’ve only really seen each other at posh events, and I must say you’ve scrubbed up very well for those, but like I said, you’ve really let yourself go.’

  ‘How dare—’ I began furiously.

  He ploughed on. By now, I admit, I was listening. ‘Go and make yourself look like the woman Theo fell in love with. And before you say that it won’t be much fun for him sitting around while you’re being returned to a fit and proper state, can you imagine anything better for him than sitting on your balcony with the sun on his face and a book in his hands? You may say you don’t need a break, Jodie, but Theo must be near to burn out. The hours that poor bugger works! And for peanuts, too, I don’t doubt. When did he last have a holiday?’

  ‘Our honeymoon.’ Those two weeks in South Africa seemed a lifetime ago.

  ‘And since then he’s on duty six days of the seven. Good schedule for a heart attack that – and no doubt wherever he goes he’s pressed to eat cake or a biscuit to go with the vile tea and coffee. You need to watch him, Jodie. That’s what Rosemary says, anyway,’ he admitted. ‘She’ll keep an eye on me while you’re off – and there’s Mazza, of course.’

  My regular London hairdresser promised that if I could get to her salon before five, she’d stay behind to deal with me; one of her colleagues could work on my hands while the hair colour was taking. Theo briefly havered about illicitly missing two hours of parish time, but agreed that he could actually work on the train and would go ahead to open up the flat while I got pampered. I arrived at the salon with four minutes to spare.

  Theo was clearly pleased with the results. But then, our sex life was always immeasurably better away from Lesser Hogben.

  While he slept in the following morning – though I hated to admit it, Dave had probably been right about his exhaustion – I had a disconcerting visit from Ravi, my favourite of the concierge/security team. Today he was channelling not Jeeves but a PI.