‘I wish you’d cook bacon properly. Why can’t we have it crisp?’
‘Last time I did it crisp you said it was burnt.’
‘It was burnt.’
‘Talking of food,’ Cully folded the paper and rested it on her knees, reached for another brioche, ‘how’s the chef-ing coming on, Dad?’
‘I shall have to miss this week.’
‘I mean for tomorrow night, silly.’ She slathered on nearly white butter followed by lashings of black cherry jam and, without waiting for a reply, started reading again.
‘I’ve done the first course but it might be wise to get something from Sainsbury’s to follow up.’
‘Sainsbury’s.’
Joyce said, ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’
‘This is my engagement dinner we’re discussing. Plus my birthday.’
‘I’ll take us all out when the case is finished. Somewhere really nice.’
‘Not the same.’
‘I see that awful tycoon’s made the front page.’ Joyce opened up her section. ‘With, I assume, an obit inside. I wonder what it says.’
‘Did not suffer human beings gladly,’ replied her husband.
‘Bad as that?’
‘I suppose it’d be a bit pushy to ask for a piece?’ Barnaby stretched out his hand to no avail. ‘Why do I never get what I want in this house?’
‘We all love you, Dad.’
‘I’d rather you let me have a look at the paper.’ Barnaby wondered how long it would take before the press discovered that the newly deceased millionaire had been present only hours before when a murder was committed. No time at all was his conclusion and he hoped the Golden Windhorse was prepared.
Cully was chuckling again and the paper, held by slender fingers tipped with hot pink nails like glossy almonds, trembled. She was wearing a man’s silk foulard dressing-gown, her long dark hair piled up and loosely pinned on top of her beautifully shaped head. A curl fell forward and she pushed it back with unmannered grace. Or was it mannered grace? It was never easy to tell where the daughter left off and the actress began. Barnaby had to remind himself - observing the sweet curve of her cheek, the soft unblemished apricot skin and baby fine golden down on her forearm - that this was a girl who’d been around. On the pill at sixteen, she’d also taken soft drugs during a punk-rock phase. Something she only told him about when it was over and done with. And now here she was, five years and God alone knew how many lovers later, looking as exquisite and untouched as a newly opened rose. Ah youth ... youth ...
‘What on earth’s the matter, Tom?’
‘Mm?’
‘Have you got indigestion?’
‘No thanks to that bacon if I haven’t. Well, if I can’t share the paper,’ he scowled at his daughter, ‘perhaps I can share the joke?’
‘A man who thought he’d been unfairly sentenced broke into the judge’s chambers during recess and boiled his wig in an electric kettle.’
‘I don’t believe that. I do not believe that.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Show me.’ It almost worked. The paper was nearly passed across. Then at the last minute snatched back.
Joyce laughed, started to read out bits from her section; the weather, a recipe, a detailed account of someone squatting up a tree to save the whales.
‘Won’t find many whales up there,’ said Barnaby.
‘There was another car bomb at the weekend,’ rustle, rustle. ‘The victim was someone in the UDR. It says he’s emigrating to Canada.’
‘Quite a blast then.’ Cully grinned at her father.
‘That’s not very funny, darling.’
‘Is this murder at Compton Dando’ - Joyce peered over the edge - ‘the one you’re working on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’
‘I did.’
‘You just said “out Iver way”.’
‘What does it -’
‘That’s absolutely typical.’ Joyce folded her paper and slapped it on the table, upsetting a salt cellar. Barnaby’s hand crept out.
‘Don’t you dare!’ snapped his wife.
‘Do you know what’s got into your mother this morning?’
Cully gazed out of the window at the flowering jasmine - refusing, as she always did, to collude or take sides.
‘Don’t discuss me as if I’m invisible, Tom. It’s infuriating.’
‘All right. So what’s supposed to be typical of me this time?’
‘You don’t talk to me.’
‘My God, Joycey - I’ve been talking to you about my job for twenty years. I’d’ve thought you’d be glad of a break.’
‘And - what is worse - you don’t listen.’ Barnaby sighed. ‘I bet you don’t remember Ann Cousins.’
‘Who?’
‘I thought so. My friend at Compton Dando.’
‘Ah.’
‘Last year after Alan died this Manor House lot did a workshop called New Horizons, which she thought might help. A great disappointment as it turned out. All style and no content. We both went.’
‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I did tell you.’ Joyce smiled with a certain grim satisfaction. ‘In great detail. Even when your body’s at home your mind’s at work. You have no interest in anything I do.’
‘That’s grossly unfair. I’m always down at the theatre painting scenery. I never miss one of your shows -’
‘You missed the last one.’
‘Two children had been abducted. Or perhaps you don’t remember -’
‘Poppy Levine’s getting married.’
Cully’s voice, loud and clear, sliced through the deepening acrimony. Her parents, choosing to believe their daughter was becoming upset, immediately ceased hostilities.
Cully, merely bored, continued: ‘In a skirt up to her cleavage and sequinned leggings.’
‘I’m late.’ Barnaby got up. ‘We’ll talk about this visit of yours when I get home.’
‘Suddenly I’m interesting,’ said Joyce sourly. She got up, too, and moved behind Cully’s chair where she lowered her greying curly head and scowled at the wedding picture. ‘Six husbands and she looks about twenty-one. How does she do it?’
‘Rumour is she sold her epidermis to the devil. Look at that.’ Cully flicked the paper hard with her nail. ‘It really gets me the way they always print how old a woman is. Poppy Levine, thirty-nine, marries cameraman Christopher Wainwright. No mention of his age - Dad!’ The Indy was snatched away. ‘Don’t be so bloody rude!’
Barnaby scanned, shook out the relevant page, folded it.
‘There’s an interview with Nick Hytner on the back of that ... Dad ...’
‘What is it?’ said Joyce. ‘Something to do with the case?’
‘Sorry.’ Barnaby shrugged on his jacket. ‘Take too long to explain.’
‘There you go again. That’s exactly what I mean.’ The door slammed. Joyce turned to Cully and repeated herself. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
Troy sped along the A40. Fast, easy, relaxed, enjoying his superior position as the one who knows. His passenger did little drum rolls on his blue-denimed knees. Before that he had played with a packet of Polos in the glove compartment, then fiddled with his seat belt until Troy had sharply instructed him to desist.
‘But what does he want to see me for?’
‘I couldn’t rightly say, sir.’
‘I’m sure you could rightly say if it suited you.’
Troy was not to be provoked. Nor was he unwise enough to show his pleasure at having a member of the great British public sweating away, supplicant and vulnerable, at his side. He was especially pleased that it was Wainwright whom he’d had down as a swaggering bastard - although in the sergeant’s book this meant no more than a simple refusal to be struck all of a heap at the sight of a CID warrant card.