“Yes. Who are you? I only got home at three this morning. Are you the police?”
“Certainly not,” said Natalie. “What an idea.”
“They’ve been phoning me. I told them not to get here till ten.”
“That’s why I got here at nine.” Natalie put one foot over the threshold. “Can I come in?”
Jims had spent the evening lecturing Zillah on what he called her “disgusting and criminal behavior.” If he was to continue to share his life with her it must be on the strict understanding that she did what she was told, starting with a marriage ceremony, quietly carried out this time at a hotel or some such place, anywhere licensed for weddings. After that it would be more sensible for her to live permanently at Fredington Crucis House, only coming to London when her presence was required at some Conservative function, say a party hosted by the leader of the Opposition. Eugenie must go to boarding school and Jordan follow her in three years’ time. Meanwhile he would attend a nursery school of Jims’s choosing.
“I won’t,” Zillah said. “I’ve only just left the bloody place and I’m not going back.”
“I’m afraid you must, my dear. If you don’t I shall have no option but to leave you, or rather, turn you out. Because if we aren’t married and haven’t even lived together for more than two months, I shall be under no legal obligation to support you. Jerry can’t, if he ever did to any extent. He’s dead. So you either toe the line or go on the benefit. I don’t know where you’ll live but I dare say Westminster would put you in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.”
“What a bastard you are.”
“Calling names won’t help. Thanks to some crafty string-pulling, I’ve arranged for us to be married on Wednesday. All right with you?”
That had been Monday. Neither of them had much sleep that night. Even though he hadn’t revealed his state of mind to Zillah, Jims was seriously worried about the police investigation. One never knew when they would pounce again, for pounce he was sure they would. The chief whip had as yet said nothing to him and neither had the leader of the Opposition, but from each he fancied he’d received chilly looks. The idea that they were biding their time was inescapable.
Zillah, too, lay awake but, oddly enough, her state of mind was far more cheerful and forward-looking than his. That afternoon, before he came home, she’d had a phone call from a television channel called Moon and Stars asking her if she’d be willing to go on their A Bite of Breakfast show and talk about her experiences. She’d said she’d think about it and get back to them on Tuesday. If she played her cards right, she could maybe have a career in television. It might be wisest to get married first, just to be on the safe side. She’d ring Moon and Stars in the morning and ask them to wait just one more day, when she’d be able to give them a positive answer.
Jims worried also about the newspapers. That remark of Leonardo’s about describing the man who’d been “helping the police with their inquiries” as a well-known Tory MP still rankled. He was pretty sure they couldn’t do that, they wouldn’t dare, it would be sub judice or whatever the term was, and once again he wished he had some legal training. Probably there would be nothing anyone could link with him-but when would they come back for him? Could he find the courage to make an appointment with the chief whip before the tiresome man sent for him? Once he’d have said his nerve was limitless, but now he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t understand why he’d had no invitations from the Today program or Jeremy Paxman’s Start the Week. They came fast enough when he had nothing to say.
The newspapers flopped onto the mat at six-thirty in the morning. Jims had only slept for about an hour. He was up drinking coffee. If he grabbed the papers with unseemly haste, there was no one to see him. He sighed with relief for there was nothing more about him than the usual “man helping.” So far, so good. A pity, really, that there was no point in going back to bed at this hour. He could have slept at last.
The manager-he called himself the chief executive-of the Merry Cookhouse on the A30 remembered Jims, identifying him from a photograph without any trouble. He had been the rudest and most difficult customer the man behind the counter had come across for some time. When he’d finished insulting the décor and the service, he’d said the food wasn’t fit for pigs, it was a suppurating sore on the fair face of England, and the staff were morons who couldn’t tell a chicken breast from a pig’s balls.
That had been at three o’clock on the Friday afternoon. Violent Crimes reasoned, rather to their disappointment, that with the state of the traffic, Jims couldn’t possibly have got from this point in Hampshire to Marble Arch in under two hours, more likely three. They didn’t bother to tell him so. Why not let him sweat for a bit? He was obviously guilty of something, if not murder. Once they’d got the evidence of the Merry Cookhouse man, they didn’t take the trouble to call on Amber Conway, though they might have done so if they’d known Natalie Reckman had forestalled them.
“This MP chap, he was a mate of Leonardo Norton, was he?” Natalie was asking this question at the very moment Violent Crimes’s visit was due. “What you’d call a close friend?”
“More than that,” said Amber. “You won’t mention my name, will you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“I suppose I’m naive, but I thought for a long time it was politics. We’re all very political in Westminster, you know.”
Natalie switched off the recording device Amber hadn’t noticed she was using. “Often borrowed your key, did he?”
“I’ve never known him do it before. He had a key of his own.”
Back at home, Natalie found a message waiting for her on her answering machine. It was from Zillah Melcombe-Smith and for a start it sang, rather well and in tune: “I’m getting married in the morning.” This was followed by spoken words: “Sorry if I wasn’t very nice to you last time. I was under a lot of pressure. Once I’m legally married to that sod I’ll have a story for you. Would you like to come round on Wednesday afternoon, say about three?”
Natalie put everything on hold. The inquest having taken place and been adjourned, Jeff was getting himself cremated that afternoon at Golders Green. She might as well go. After all, she’d been attached to him for longer than most of his other women and though she’d finally thrown him out, their parting had been as amicable as possible in the circumstances, and her fondness for him had endured until his death. That was probably because she’d never been under any illusions about him.
At two o’clock she dressed herself in a black skirt and jacket. Some precept lingering from years ago when she’d lived at home with her mother made the idea of a trouser suit worn to a funeral seem indecent. Natalie didn’t like hats and only had one, an unbleached straw with a big brim she’d bought for a holiday in Egypt. It wouldn’t do, so she went bareheaded. So did Zillah Melcombe-Smith, whom she hadn’t expected to see. She smiled at her across the chapel, and waved in a discreet and funereal way, suitably subdued to be appropriate for the occasion. Zillah had a child with her, the little boy who was always crying and was Jeff Leach’s son. No doubt, there was no one around for her to leave him with. The voluntary set him off and he was screaming at the top of his lungs by the time the coffin was carried in.
The weeping woman in deepest unrelieved black must be the current girlfriend, or rather, the most recent past girlfriend. Fiona Something. Blond, as usual, with the exception of the one he’d married. She cried all through the perfunctory service. The fat woman who’d come with her put an arm round her shoulders, then pressed her to the biggest bust-you couldn’t call it “breasts”-Natalie had ever seen. That man who’d made such a success of a TV program about anorexia was with them, singing hymns in rather a good baritone. Natalie hadn’t sent any flowers. She’d been feeling guilty about that, but now felt worse, there were so few wreaths. Those there were lay on a paved courtyard outside the crematorium, gerberas and lilies and ranunculus mostly, and Natalie thought how flowers sold in Britain had changed in the past ten years. Before that, it would have been all roses and carnations. A card on the biggest sheaf read: In adored memory of my darling Jeff, Your Fiona. Next to it was a wreath of white dianthus, tightly packed, that looked uncannily like a large Polo mint. The In loving memory card said, From Dad and Beryl. Nothing from the widow. No other former girlfriends there.